Conky KDE Transparency (en)

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Conky KDE Transparency

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One of the most common comments we see is about how KDE is not very friendly with conky transparency. Transparency in KDE is a bit tricky due to how the desktop layer is actually handled. The best way I have found to handle this is to use a program like “feh”.

sudo apt-get install feh

In KDE 3 the following code is advised to get around this problem… simply add it to your conkyrc.

${texeci 600 feh --bg-scale 'dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface currentWallpaper 1'}

and indeed entering the following into conky works regardless of what version of kde you use!

${texeci 600 feh --bg-scale '/path/to/my/wallpaper'}

Of course this means we have to edit the .conkyrc each time we change the wallpaper.

We’ll pause here, because I hear the saltier of you saying “Why use texeci?”

I suggest using texeci instead of execi because it allows conky to continue drawing without waiting for feh to finish. I suggest using texeci instead of texec because in the event that you change your wallpaper you will want feh to trigger again with the updated info. (This info is not written to the config file often in KDE4 though, so you may find the background mismatches for hours at a time… thus the long pause in the KDE4 version.)

Moving on... I have found that the latest version of KDE4 works with the following command:

${texeci 3600 feh --bg-scale "`grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc | head -n1 | tail --bytes=+11`"}

However, you may find that this does not work for your particupar version of KDE4. I have noticed that older builds of KDE4 saved their wallpaper info in different places. Try one of these commands, instead:

${texeci 3600 feh --bg-scale "`grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde/share/config/plasma-appletsrc | tail -n1 | tail --bytes=+11`"}
${texeci 3600 feh --bg-scale "`grep 'wallpaper=' ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc | tail --bytes=+11`"}

NOTE: if you plan to use the conkytemplate.sh you will notice there is already a line in there for this very issue. (which means you may need to edit it depending on your version.)

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