[Osiris]

Monitor Your Linux Desktop with Gkrellm

As many of you know I am a fan of alternative desktops. My favorite being E16. The only downfall of E16 is that the epplets, tiny applications that monitor, launch applications, and other important duties, can be a real hassle to install (and often too small to read). And other minimal desktops have nothing to offer.
That is where applications like Gkrellm comes in. Gkrellm is a small stack of system monitors that is configurable and themeable. Using this application can solve a lot of your problems when using a lightweight desktop.
Included Monitors

• Gkrellm includes the following monitors:
• Hostname/Systemname display
• Clock/Calendar
• CPU Monitor
• Temp/Fan/Voltage
• Process Monitor
• Disk Monitor
• Net Monitor
• Memory/Swap Space Usage
• File System Monitor
• Mailbox Monitor
• Battery Meter
• Uptime

Getting and Installing
Installing Gkrellm is simple. You can either do a search in your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for “gkrellm”, select the correct results, and apply the changes. From the command line you can run a command like sudo apt-get install gkrellm or yum install gkrellm. To start Gkrellm you can issue the command gkrellm to start up the monitoring system.
Gkrellm Main Window

The Gkrellm interface is very easy to read. As you can see (in the image to the left) the monitors are very clear and well designed. In the image you see I have running Systemname, Calendar/Time, CPU, Disk, Wireless, Memory, Swap, Battery, and Uptime. You can also see the Memory and Swap monitors are showing no information. Some of the monitors are “interactive”. By that you can click that particular monitor to stop monitoring. Click again and the monitoring stops. NOTE: Not all monitors are interactive (but all are configurable.)
Speaking of configuring, there are two ways to configure Gkrellm. You can right-click the window to open up a menu that offers the Configuration entry. Or you can click F1 when your mouse is in the Gkrellm window.
The configuration is very simple and straight-forward. From here you can configure which monitors to include, the theme to use, general options (which apply to the Gkrelm window itself), and any plugins you might have installed.
Configuration Window

The configuration of all aspects of Gkrellm is simple. But most important is how to include a monitor. As you can see (in the image to the right) there is a listing for each built in monitor. Click on the monitor you want to add or remove and you will see, near the top of the options in the right pane, a check box to include the monitor. If you want to remove that monitor simply uncheck the box. The changes happen in real-time so there is no need to click OK (unless you want to dismiss the options window.)
Themes
Who wants to have a monitoring window on their desktop that doesn’t match their desktop theme? And for that Gkrellm has a number of built-in themes. Click on the Theme entry from the configuration options and scroll through the various themes. You can also install themes. Find some themes from such a site as Freshmeat and untar the files in ~/.gkrellm/themes/. Restart Gkrellm and the themes will appear in the Themes section of the configuration window.
Final Thoughts
Gkrellm allows me to use my favorite Linux desktop and not miss out on simple necessities such as time, system stats, etc. If you’re looking for an easy to use system monitor, Gkrellm is what you need.

[Jayce]

Very nice. Is this something that is Debian based for easy installation in a distro like Ubuntu? That site is filtered here at work so I'll check it when I get home. Figured I'd take a shot and see if I can get an early answer beforehand, though.

[Greg]

I prefer Conky, it seems much more customizable through its ~/.conkyrc config file.

sudo apt-get install conky

[Jayce]

Although I like both of these programs, I find the standard system monitor built into Ubuntu to be a little more visually appealing... however, it's simpler.

I just simply added it to my top gnome taskbar and I set the pixels to 165 (for my particular monitor it works, smaller monitors may not want that width). I have cpu/memory/network/load/hard drive activity all across the top... Looks pretty decent, but like I said, it's simpler... just imagine 5 graphs with colored lines, and that's what ya got.

[lyecdevf]

To monitor my desktop I have been using gnome system monitor because I did not know of any thing else. Thanks for this thread!

[farinha]

If you want monitor your computer temps with Gkrellm install lm-sensors, run "sudo apt-get install lm-sensors" and then "sensors-detect" in the terminal.