Revised: 09 Aug 2020
If you are like me, you want information about activities and resources consumed on your PC/ Laptop. As a user (and fan) of dwm, I have had a ‘whale of a time’ making that information available on my “Desktop.”
After much research and ‘trial & error’, I have arrived at a ‘pretty good’ place. I have modified my desktop’s dwm panel (see panel bar at the top of my screenshot) using some code tweaks, xsetroot and one plugin (I had wanted to avoid plugins, and simply haven’t been able to). The top panel now shows the following items (top left to right).
- My workspaces (tags) at the top-left are all labeled via config.h using FontAwesome glyphs.
- Status information on Total Memory Available and Used along with CPU use (%) is provided via either:
- xsetroot (to use this xsetroot commands simply need to be used as per the dotfile below)
- slstatus (this is probably the best option), to use this method you need to:
- change the start-dwm.sh file to start slstatus using: slstatus &
- install slstatus following the instructions here
- use the slstatus config.h download as provided below
- The top-right systray with Notifications are provided via a suckless plugin.
To the Right of the screen on the Desktop (bottom layer), you will note a Conky. It appears in every workspace. This conky highlights system information, keybindings, and top CPU processes.
The dotfiles, etc. for creating the above are available ‘for FREE’ and are almost certainly worth every penny.
- config-h(with my tweaks to dwm)
- start-dwm.sh.tar (with xsetroot commands)
- slstatus-config-h (with my tweaks)
This content is free to use, adapt, and share.
Knowledge and information should be open—please spread them far and wide.A few things to keep in mind:
- All of my work comes with absolutely no warranty, expressed or implied. However…
- It will almost certainly work until it breaks,
though I must admit it may never work or be useful—and that would be sad.- If/when it breaks, you can keep all the pieces.
- As for what you don’t like, it’s yours to do with as you will.
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Full disclosure:
I use various AI systems to assist in developing my content.
If you’re curious about how I use them, feel free to check out:
The Revolutionary Impact of AI on Genealogy and Historical Research.