I object to this comment.
> Almost every program is Windows only and has no alternative in Linux.
To the contrary, almost everything from Windows has a Linux alternative. Fan control and temp monitors both exist. Microsoft Office? Use LibreOffice. Photoshop? Use GIMP. Chrome and Firefox both run in Linux and handle all browser-related tasks. Need a VM? Linux has it.
I'm willing to bet that I could find a good Linux alternative for almost any application on Windows, including most video games through Wine.
>MSI afterburner, geforce experience, etc.
These are exceptions to what I said before. Overclocking is not well-developed on Linux and Nvidia hasn't yet released a driver manager/setting tweaker for Linux.
>any program that has an exe at the end.
Linux doesn't natively use the .exe file extension, nor does it natively run code complied for Windows, but neither does OSX. So what? This doesn't say anything about Linux's ability to do things.
Also, it's often possible to run .exe files through Linux.
> Gaming
I find this ironic, because Valve is pushing extremely hard to get gaming on Linux. Steamboxes actually run on Linux.
Nvidia is also trying to get mainstream gaming onto Android, which is a distribution of Linux.
The percentage of games that won't run on Linux is falling rapidly.
Try gkrellm
I sipped through it and found chart plugin here:
http://gkrellm.srcbox.net/Plugins.html Geoff Kuenning has implemented a chart plugin that monitors a file for numeric data and plots it on a chart so you can now have customized charts displaying data of your choice.
or
Fileread 2.00 for GKrellM2
Then add some script which checks the conditions and feed the result into file.
This solution is a bit awkward so there may be better one...
gkrellm with the invisible skin (or you can easily make your own) skins here (search ALL is easiest)
it's perfect if you run a wm without panels or pagers and just the wallpaper and have all your menus tied to mouse clicks. It's the lightest, fastest and easiest thing to configure inside its own menus.
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geeqie an image viewer that is ultra light and fast that has been my default since forever.
Personally, I like GKrellM; just stuck it as a dock on the right side of the screen, and while it takes up some screen real estate, I have everything I need at a glance. Memory, CPU and network usage, temperature, a clock, calendar, unread/total mail count, a battery indicator and a desktop switcher.
If you click on the bottom-right corner of the Network graph, you can see the daily, weekly and monthly usage.
If you use Stacer I suggest the only component you use are Services, Processes, and Resources. Use Software Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, or the command line to install and remove applications, Software Sources to manage repositories, and Startup Applications to manage which applications launch at boot time. Leave the System Cleaner alone.
OP: Another option is GKrellM. It has not been updated in a couple of years, but it still appears in Software Manager. It should work with the current versions of LM. I used it for a while on LM 17.2 because I wanted a desktop system monitor and I was too lazy to mess with Conky - I stopped using it when I moved to LM 18.1 and eliminated eye candy.
http://gkrellm.srcbox.net/
a few hidden extras:
The iconbox (after my settings are applied) becomes non-existant until something is iconified. If you want to change the icon-box settings you must first iconify anything and then ctrl+R.click to get settings, close or create a new iconbox. This invisible iconfield can be set anywhere you drag it to and also any desktop (up to 32 desktops, I only use 2 though).
my setup is:
iconbox :
orientation = horizontal
scrollbar = right/left
scrollbar arrows= both
animation/show...whirl/yes, and speed of 80
icon image display policy is "Use Enlightenment icon, Snapshot window"
I do this b/c I found e16 can run alongside KDE or GNOME and I delete those wm's after installing and running e16.
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I close both pager boxes and run gkrellm with the invisible theme as a monitor. This is excellent on old (or any) system.
This wm/setup can run for years without rebooting if you have a UPS and is light, fast, elegant and functional.
also, you can reconfigure your menus if you want to rename applications or organize your favorites (e16 will sort of do this with r-click) and I would suggest to add dolphin as a file manager.
I'd also say the easiest way to install anything is through a terminal and yum-search, then yum-install for automatic dependancies.
Once it's setup it's probably the most reliable system i've ever used.
for me (whose comfortable with gnu/linux) is a native linux install with a vm for winX.
This would allow you to run both os's at the same time.
also, while you're watching and waiting for winx to do it's Tuesdays update you can be surfing or whatever on your linux system and keeping an eye on the vm.
I've setup and managed hundreds of vm's and it's (at most) a few extra steps to build but once it is done the winx is so much faster and easier to restore if/when things go wrong. Like it's as easy as a few clicks of a mouse to keep a snapshot (or 2, 3...) and select it.
My favorite is Slackware or Fedora, then run gkrellm on your linux system to keep an eye on all the things and your productivity will fly.
My fastest desktop pc was about 5 years ago I built a new, budget bare metal machine with all parts on sale (Asus mobo+AMD4350fx, all cheap RAM, and toshiba 1gb hdd x3 in a raid 0 setup. Total cost was >$500.
Fedora 27 (I think) and added E16, then completely removed KDE after setting auto-login up. Ran e16 without pagers, panels, nothing..just the background + gkrellm (invisible theme to blend with bg and have easy viewpoints for everyone to know how the pc is performing.
result was sub 10 seconds from completely OFF, fast post, autologged in generic user, auto-start gkrellm and eterm to run a sandbox to load a browser (firefox) and online...in less then 10 seconds.
However, I do prefer to never use auto-logins and also raid10 if possible for mission critical scenarios. This was for the public space to browse youtube or other generic access.
I used the "GKrellm" app for years. It's getting a bit dated now but it shows a constant output on the screen of the current CPU temps, fan speeds, etc. It's in the repository and here is the webpage: http://gkrellm.srcbox.net/
"Conky" is another option you could check out.
also, open another terminal and use firejail to open your browsers (or use different terminals to open every program to read errors if, when, and as they occur).
I use different browsers for different reasons. firefox 66.0.4 will play youtube videos without ads.
so what we do is, open a terminal as a normal user (not as root) and type : firejail firefox [enter]
you can firejail any process and at least watch a video about firejail.
to open different versions of a browser at the same time, cd into that folder and launch it from there. Or create your own menus.
another thing I'd suggest is to run top (or I prefer gkrellm (themes here)) to constantly monitor your system. This will help you be aware of what your system is doing at a glance.
Sometimes a web page will start taxing my system and I can kill it or stop processes but without looking at the graph I wouldn't know it was going on b/c my machine is silent and linux almost never bogs down. Doesn't happen much but I've seen it about once a month.
My pleasure! You raised an interesting question. I've played with Window Maker in the past and liked the dockapp idea from there, so I've always been curious to see if the idea has evolved.
I don't think there's a central place to ask for something like this. The idea has me curious, I may try to poke around with it, but I've never done anything like that before so I make no guarantees.
This may not be quite what you're looking for, but a similar sort of floating status panel app that I've used and liked is GKrellM. It's a status indicator and not really a launcher, but still intereesting.
I have been using twm on my main desktops since 2010 or so. I started using it for fun, and ended up so accustomed to how things are done with it, that I only occasionally switched to other wms and never for too long. Everything I need is on the menu, and the icon manager on the top left serves as a taskbar. gkrellm2 cause I didn't know how to "conky" until recently. I used to configure vdesk, but I never really used the extra desktops, got used to pile everything on one single screen.
conky is close just not as pretty as the one your showing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5csaCSyfoo
This one is kinda close
I still like conky. I can get close to what you have there. Don't have time to mess with it though. Here some more screenshots of conky.
When you can just cat that device, it's not that deep.
It's just whether the plugin bothers to do it. To test, you can try gkrellm with some plugins if needed, to see if it can see the device properly.
https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/gkrellm/
Nice, I made a similar skin a few years ago called FKellM (named after GKrellM, a stacked system monitor for *ix).
Skin here. I should probably dig out and release the scripts I use to generate it, since someone else might find it useful - makes generating a bunch of variants of a given meter quite easy.
I like the idea of conky -- a stripped down status monitor sounds pretty good. I also like the idea of a text config file.
However, in practice, it seems to use more CPU time than the older GTK-based gkrellm, which I'm still using. It also has a much-smaller library of things that it can monitor.