How To Install SysPeek System Monitor Indicator in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

SysPeek is another small utility (an "applet type") that runs within the notification area of your Ubuntu PC/Laptop and displays updated information about CPU/RAM, etc once you click on its small icon.

Although to be honest the application is at its early stage yet it's quite cool and somewhat useful :/. Like many others, it also has an indicator icon which changes its colors and "levels" according to your CPU usage.

I sometimes find this quite useful. Because unless you have a bit loud Laptop or quite familiar with your PC, it can be quite difficult to notice those buggy applications that consume unnecessary amounts of CPU usages (you know, you can guess these from the noise from your CPU Fan, sometimes).

In those cases, applications such as SysPeek can be very handy since you don't even have to launch or move your mouse over it... just have a quick look at its icon and you know whether you're in trouble or not :P.

Yo!, mayday mayday.... "oh man, not again! :)..."

Main features...

*. When you click on the icon it'll reveal a CPU usage meter at the top (below screenshot).

*. Memory usage/RAM.

*. Swap usage - Virtual memory.

*. Disk usage analyzer.

*. Network receive/sent data and you can even launch the Gnome's built in System Monitor through it... although I'm not entirely sure but SysPeek can be an applet that "extracts" those information from that System Monitor and displays in its own screen as well.

Anyhow, you can install SysPeek in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vicox/syspeek

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install  syspeek

Once install, press "Alt" + "F2" keys on your Keyboard and enter the below command into the box and it'll appear within your notification area, hopefully (just kidding, it works).

syspeek

How to Install Conky in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Unlike GNU/Linux MS Windows really sucked when it comes to showing live updates of your PC resources such as CPU usage, RAM usage, etc until it hit Microsoft when they released the notorious Vista which is now followed by "7". But from the beginning GNU/Linux had its fare share of excellent small utilities that show you updated/detailed information about your PC/Laptop.

But a concern among these "system monitor" apps is that they aren't that PC resource friendly. They may look nice but what use of such as app if it consumes a reasonable amount of your RAM or CPU which can be irritating rather than being a helper (shortens the battery life on a Laptop for instance).

In that I think that most of you guys will love Conky for what it is. To be short and sweet :), Conky is an excellent system monitoring application which has the ability to display live information about your...

*. CPU load.

*. RAM/Swap usage.

Conky after adding the Faenza theme...

*. HDD activities.

*. Network load.

*. Battery related information.

*. POP and IMAP support which shows e-mail inbox and various other system messages are just a few to mention.

But most importantly Conky has a really impressive reputation of needing very little of your system resources for the application itself. So when other OS or application rely on getting those PC resources information on "heavy" toolkit written (Qt/GTK+, etc) apps, Conky on the other hand uses the old and powerful X-Windows system.

And after seeing the massive success... now Conky even supports transparency effects as well. Although the apps that use X-Windows Systems aren't the most beautiful ones yet with its built in themes support, once installed the core "engine", you can then use a beautiful looking theme and make it look totally sexy!.

One of the built in "typical X-Windows" themes :)...

Enough bragging, if you use Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal or 10.10/10.04 then you can install Conky by entering the below text in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install conky

Or, you can use the official PPA which includes latest features that aren't visible in the official stable releases. You can install it by entering the below command instead of the one above.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:conkyhardcore/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install conky-all

Enjoy!.