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t0w3rh0u53

Member

Registered: 2018-04-11

Posts: 11

Conky behind desktop icons

At this moment I've placed some desktop icons on my KDE Plasma desktop. Conky is working fine as well.
Now it would be nice if the desktop icons can't get behind the conky screens, so they stay on top of them.

I guess this is not possible, but I would like to be more certain of this.

There are so many options out there, which suggest they have a solution for this but actually come up with solutions so that icons are still "visible", but still behind the conky panels (e.g. complete transparancy)
Is it, because conky actually is a "window"  like any other (as well as your browser, file manager etc.), so it's never possible to get the desktop icons on top of them?
If so, how do you guys handle this: just don't use desktop icons or place conky somewhere on the screen so they're far away from the desktop icons, or something else?

IF, for some magical reason, there is a way to place the desktop icons on top of conky (without making a screenshot and use it as a static wallpaper, haha), I would like to hear about it.

Last edited by t0w3rh0u53 (2020-12-04 10:57:14)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,685

Re: Conky behind desktop icons

I guess this is not possible

Depends.

The plasma desktop is a desktop type window above the root window.
Conky can render either to the root window or in an extra window.

So in order to get the icons above conky, you've have to render conky into the root window and then you need an ARGB desktop window with a transparent wallpaper (you can still have a wallpaper as pixmap in the root window)
The problem will be to get a transparent ARGB plasma desktop window and I'm not sure whether plasma supports that (plus there might be visual glitches because the plasma window is a GL context) and you MUST use compositing (otherwise transparent areas will just be black)

People w/ conky in the background and icons on top will typically have conky in the root window, no compositor, no desktop window and sth. like https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/idesk/ - no fancy desktop environment.

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t0w3rh0u53

Member

Registered: 2018-04-11

Posts: 11

Re: Conky behind desktop icons

I guess this is not possible

Depends.

The plasma desktop is a desktop type window above the root window.
Conky can render either to the root window or in an extra window.

So in order to get the icons above conky, you've have to render conky into the root window and then you need an ARGB desktop window with a transparent wallpaper (you can still have a wallpaper as pixmap in the root window)
The problem will be to get a transparent ARGB plasma desktop window and I'm not sure whether plasma supports that (plus there might be visual glitches because the plasma window is a GL context) and you MUST use compositing (otherwise transparent areas will just be black)

People w/ conky in the background and icons on top will typically have conky in the root window, no compositor, no desktop window and sth. like https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/idesk/ - no fancy desktop environment.

Thanks for your quick response. That does sound very interesting... I just found a more or less related thread from 10 years ago on another forum as well. It didn't provide any solution though.

But it sounds as a cool challenge to figure this out! I will get into this. Thanks for the info!
If not, I can always go back to a less fancy desktop I suppose, like you mentioned

Last edited by t0w3rh0u53 (2020-12-04 13:16:10)