Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

Aravisian · 2020-01-30 18:25:08

On XFCE 4.12, backgrounds were transparent. But I have noticed that transparency has changed on the XFCE 4.14 desktop- now Transparencies show as a pitch black background behind transparent objects, instead of being transparent.
My conky objects are this way on 4.14. How can I fix?

ToZ · 2020-01-30 19:17:19

If I remember correctly, you need to adjust the "own_window" settings. Which ones do you currently have set?

Something like these should work:

 conky.config = {
    own_window = true,
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    own_window_type = 'desktop',
 }

Aravisian · 2020-01-30 20:20:29

ToZ wrote:

If I remember correctly, you need to adjust the "own_window" settings. Which ones do you currently have set?
Something like these should work:
 conky.config = {
    own_window = true,
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    own_window_type = 'desktop',
 }

That is what mine say. With those settings, the background color is present AND the entire conky turns very translucent instead of being a solid conky with the background transparent.

Last edited by Aravisian (2020-01-30 20:22:37)

jakfish · 2020-01-30 21:37:40

Aravisian, have you played with the xfce's composite manager? I had some issue with Rainlendar on the desktop, a black shadow around its windows, and composite/window tweaks removed them.

Before I realized that one could embed the xfce panel into the window title bar and save real estate, I used to run a conky across the title bar, persistently. Figured that out through conky's "hints" Here are the pertinent settings, though I no longer run conky:

    own_window = true,
    own_window_class = 'Conky',
    own_window_type = 'override',
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,skip_taskbar,sticky,skip_pager',

I don't know how many stats you need, but I ran all my conky vitals in one line on top of all title bars (one of the many workarounds needed for a small screen).

Last edited by jakfish (2020-01-30 21:39:07)

Aravisian · 2020-01-31 01:07:41

jakfish wrote:

Aravisian, have you played with the xfce's composite manager? I had some issue with Rainlendar on the desktop, a black shadow around its windows, and composite/window tweaks removed them.

That is exactly what I have. Black background on any conky or any other item that has a transparent background on the desktop.
This never happened in 4.12.
It happens in any and all XFCE 4.14 equipped distros I have tried across several computers.
I looked at the composite manager, but I didn't see anything that I thought may resolve this issue. I'll be very happy to be corrected on that...

jakfish wrote:

    own_window = true,
    own_window_class = 'Conky',
    own_window_type = 'override',
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,skip_taskbar,sticky,skip_pager',

These were my settins on XFCE 4.12. I tried them here on 4.14 with no luck. I also tried Normal and Desktop.
No luck, there.

ToZ · 2020-01-31 02:55:23

@Aravisian, do you have an nvidia card?

How about something like this:

own_window_transparent no
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_argb_value 145

If this gives you semi-transparency, then try playing the argb_value - set it to either 0 or 255.

Aravisian · 2020-01-31 03:20:08

ToZ wrote:

@Aravisian, do you have an nvidia card?
How about something like this:
own_window_transparent no
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_argb_value 145 
If this gives you semi-transparency, then try playing the argb_value - set it to either 0 or 255.

No, I do not. It is AMD Radeon.
I tried your suggestion and changed the argb value from 0 all the way up to 255 with many in between and the transparency and the appearance of the conky did not change, at all.
Honestly, it's not just conky but ANY transparency on the new 4.14 desktop.

ozjd · 2020-01-31 03:39:25

What version of Conky are you running? I notice that some of the examples here are in the old format and some in the new. The first ones are current but the last one was in the old format. Current Conky versions don't always translate the old config format well.

That said this works for me with the compositor turned on in Conky 1.11.3.

-- --- Window Layout & Options --- #
-- background yes
        own_window = true,
        own_window_transparent = true,
        own_window_type = 'normal',
        own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
        own_window_argb_visual = true,

Aravisian · 2020-01-31 03:51:13

ozjd wrote:

What version of Conky are you running? I notice that some of the examples here are in the old format and some in the new. The first ones are current but the last one was in the old format. Current Conky versions don't always translate the old config format well.
That said this works for me with the compositor turned on in Conky 1.11.3.
-- --- Window Layout & Options --- #
-- background yes
        own_window = true,
        own_window_transparent = true,
        own_window_type = 'normal',
        own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
        own_window_argb_visual = true,

It is written in the old format and I installed (ubuntu bionic) from terminal with 'sudo apt-get install conky-all".
conky --version
conky 1.10.8

Last edited by Aravisian (2020-01-31 03:52:08)

ozjd · 2020-01-31 05:00:35

Aravisian wrote:

It is written in the old format and I installed (ubuntu bionic) from terminal with 'sudo apt-get install conky-all".
conky --version
conky 1.10.8

Conky 1.10 was the first to use the new Lua format configs. There was a script to convert config but I don't know if Ubuntu includes it.

You do have the compositor turned on, don't you?

Aravisian · 2020-01-31 05:13:20

ozjd wrote:

Aravisian wrote:
It is written in the old format and I installed (ubuntu bionic) from terminal with 'sudo apt-get install conky-all".
conky --version
conky 1.10.8
Conky 1.10 was the first to use the new Lua format configs. There was a script to convert config but I don't know if Ubuntu includes it.
You do have the compositor turned on, don't you?

Yes, compositor is on. And, it is the same conky version and same conky in every way that worked without trouble on XFCE 4.12. But they do not work on any distro bearing XFCE4.14.
I had noticed it before, but did not bother with it since until very recently, I was still using XFCE 4.12

Jerry3904 · 2020-01-31 10:42:11

We made a set of adjustments to the set of some 40 conkies (old format) that comes with MX-19, which does run Xfce 4.14, and most of them seem to work with the Xfce compositor on. If there is one you like that you want to test on your system and we have it, I'd be glad to post back the script for you to check.

Aravisian · 2020-01-31 17:11:17

Jerry3904 wrote:

We made a set of adjustments to the set of some 40 conkies (old format) that comes with MX-19, which does run Xfce 4.14, and most of them seem to work with the Xfce compositor on. If there is one you like that you want to test on your system and we have it, I'd be glad to post back the script for you to check.

Jerry, by all means. I appreciate the help and the offer. Maybe can suss out what is going wrong if I find an object going right.

UPDATE: I was toying with it and I discovered setting double buffer "no" or "false" returns the transparency to as before (background color gone).
This would be then:
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_colour 000000
own_window_argb_visual no
own_window_argb_value 0
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
background no
double_buffer no

However... Now the conky pulses as though it has a heartbeat. Maybe making some headway...

EDIT: Scratch that. It returned transparency to one conky, but not to the others. But they all pulse heavily.

Last edited by Aravisian (2020-01-31 17:44:51)

ozjd · 2020-01-31 22:28:51

Aravisian wrote:

Honestly, it's not just conky but ANY transparency on the new 4.14 desktop.

This shows that it isn't a Conky problem but a wider system problem. Have a look at https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=13233. Some of the options in there may help.

Aravisian · 2020-01-31 22:39:48

ozjd wrote:

Aravisian wrote:
Honestly, it's not just conky but ANY transparency on the new 4.14 desktop.
This shows that it isn't a Conky problem but a wider system problem. Have a look at https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=13233. Some of the options in there may help.

See why I am stumped...
Yes, I had read that thread and tried it out. I got a bad window error.
I installed xpresent libraries and tried again and no error, but no change, either.

Aravisian · 2020-02-02 01:44:06

I can achieve transparency with the suggestion made by Toz ONLY if I remove the background image. On the right, you see my conky without any background image.
On the left, you see the clock and the temp gauge with the background images. On the two on the right, as a "make it tolerable" work-around, I set the background color to 2d2b2c which is reasonably similar to the color of the background image. This will not do much if I change the desktop image, though- especially to something more complex.

This also 'ruins' several other conky objects that really work right only with the background image.

Last edited by Aravisian (2020-02-02 01:44:49)

Aravisian · 2020-02-02 23:34:59

I couldn't handle the above ^ it was clunky and ugly and had odd corners. A second attempted workaround is posted here.
As you can see above, the 3D image effect is coming out toward you. With the non-transparency creating a black border (which I changed to a gray border above), I figured I would create a background image that was 3D INSET instead, giving the illusion of the conky object sinking into the background to make use of a dark border. I created the images and used Drop Shadow in Gimp.
This is the inset effect:

Jambalak · 2020-02-23 10:47:08

Hi!
I have the same problem with my conky on XFCE 4.14! Now, there is a black background. Here the configuration of my conky:

##############################################
# Settings
##############################################
background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont Liberation Sans:size=9
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type desktop
#own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 240
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
default_color bababa
default_shade_color 000000
default_outline_color 828282
alignment top_right
gap_x 20
gap_y 55
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale yes
##############################################
#  Display
##############################################
TEXT
${alignc}S Y S T E M    I N F O R M A T I O N
${hr}
Connected since:$alignr$uptime

Hostname:$alignr$nodename
IP LAN: $alignr${addr wlp2s0}
IP WAN: $alignr${exec dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com}

OS:$alignr${execi 86400 lsb_release -ds}
Kernel:$alignr$kernel
Screen resolution:$alignr${execi 60 xdpyinfo | sed -n -r "s/^\s*dimensions:.*\s([0-9]+x[0-9]+).*/\1/p"}
Ppi (pixels per inch):$alignr${execi 60 sed -nr "s/^\s*Xft.dpi:\s*([0-9]+(x[0-9]+)?).*/\1/p" $HOME/.Xresources | grep "[0-9]" || echo 96}

CPU:$alignr${cpu cpu0}%
RAM:$alignr$mem / $memmax
Swap:$alignr$swap / $swapmax
Hard Disk:$alignr${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /}

Which parameter may i have to change for a transparent background?

ToZ · 2020-02-23 16:30:39

Jambalak wrote:

Which parameter may i have to change for a transparent background?

Have you tried any of the settings from earlier in this thread? If so, which ones and what was the results.

Also, what video card and driver do you have?

BTW, welcome to the forum.

Jambalak · 2020-02-23 18:45:41

Yes, i tried any of settings from earlier in this thread. I have the same symptoms as Aravisian.
It's very strange. I’ll try another conky to see the result. Thank's.

dajare · 2020-04-16 14:43:57

Sorry, but this post is simply to add a "me too". I have tried MANY settings (including the variants suggested in this thread) without success.

I have a very simple Conky output, but depend on it since this is running on a *very* old machine; if something's amiss, my Conky display will normally alert me to the culprit.

Disappointing, but I'll keep an eye on this thread just in case anyone has a breakthrough!

(FWIW, I'm running Mint 19.3, Xfce 4.14.1, AMD RC410M, X11/X.Org 1.20.5)

UPDATE: Well this is odd, but ... SUCCESS! Contrary to the documentation, which says that for Xfce, the conky.conf file should include the setting:

own_window_transparent = false,

which I have carefully been observing throughout my trials, I ran across something (and it's even noted in this thread, above) that prompted my to try:

own_window_transparent = true,

and that was all it took! So simple. My conky.conf file is nothing special, but if anyone is the least bit interested, I've saved it in a Gist.

Last edited by dajare (2020-04-16 18:52:40)

PaperNick · 2022-05-19 15:30:18

Sorry for bringing up this topic up from the dead.
I had the same problem that Aravisian described with Conky 1.12.2 after I updated to Xfce 4.16:

Aravisian wrote:

That is what mine say. With those settings, the background color is present AND the entire conky turns very translucent instead of being a solid conky with the background transparent.

From the Archlinux forum, I found about this new setting "draw_blended" that must be set to false:

draw_blended = false,

I combined this with the first suggestion from ToZ:

ToZ wrote:

 conky.config = {
    own_window = true,
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    own_window_type = 'desktop',
 }

And the result is a working Conky setup.

Conky source: https://www.deviantart.com/votritis/art … -208415121

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#1 2020-01-30 18:25:08

Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#2 2020-01-30 19:17:19

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#3 2020-01-30 20:20:29

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#4 2020-01-30 21:37:40

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#5 2020-01-31 01:07:41

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#6 2020-01-31 02:55:23

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#7 2020-01-31 03:20:08

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#8 2020-01-31 03:39:25

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#9 2020-01-31 03:51:13

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#10 2020-01-31 05:00:35

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#11 2020-01-31 05:13:20

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#12 2020-01-31 10:42:11

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#13 2020-01-31 17:11:17

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#14 2020-01-31 22:28:51

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#15 2020-01-31 22:39:48

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#16 2020-02-02 01:44:06

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#17 2020-02-02 23:34:59

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#18 2020-02-23 10:47:08

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#19 2020-02-23 16:30:39

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#20 2020-02-23 18:45:41

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#21 2020-04-16 14:43:57

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

#22 2022-05-19 15:30:18

Re: Conky backgrounds on XFCE 4.14

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