What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Issues and / or general discussion relating to Puppy

Moderator: Forum moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
houndstooth
Posts: 229
Joined: Sun Jul 17, 2022 9:41 am
Location: U.S.A.
Has thanked: 12 times
Been thanked: 19 times

What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by houndstooth »

This happens unintentionally:

Attachments
conky.png
conky.png (35.75 KiB) Viewed 830 times
User avatar
bigpup
Moderator
Posts: 7298
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2020 11:19 pm
Location: Earth, South Eastern U.S.
Has thanked: 951 times
Been thanked: 1613 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by bigpup »

What Puppy version are you using?

Conky has never been 100% perfect.

It has done this to me in Bookworm Pup64

I did this to fix it.

Run JWMdesk -> Conky settings -> Functions -> Restart

The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected :o

User avatar
wizard
Posts: 2076
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:50 pm
Location: Oklahoma, USA
Has thanked: 2819 times
Been thanked: 749 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by wizard »

This looks like Fossapup64 9.5, if so, the transparent background is controlled by:
Menu>Desktop>JWMDESK Manager>Windows Effects. If that is disabled you will get a solid background.
Note that this would also apply to F96, but not to Bookworm

wizard

Big pile of OLD computers

User avatar
bigpup
Moderator
Posts: 7298
Joined: Tue Jul 14, 2020 11:19 pm
Location: Earth, South Eastern U.S.
Has thanked: 951 times
Been thanked: 1613 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by bigpup »

One thing that I have noticed.

Conky will show on the desktop and not be transparent.

After a little time passes, it changes to transparent. :roll:

All the settings for it are in the conkyrc file.

Easy way to access is by using the JWMDesk -> Conky Settings -> Edit conkyrc

Looking at Conky help, the section on transparency.

I do wonder why settings needed for transparency, in conkyrc, do not exactly match what the Conky help says to use??

The things you do not tell us, are usually the clue to fixing the problem.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be older.
This is not what I expected :o

User avatar
rockedge
Site Admin
Posts: 6812
Joined: Mon Dec 02, 2019 1:38 am
Location: Connecticut,U.S.A.
Has thanked: 2964 times
Been thanked: 2790 times
Contact:

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by rockedge »

@bigpup the transparency is sometimes only a simulation. It depends also on the compositor used.

User avatar
wizard
Posts: 2076
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:50 pm
Location: Oklahoma, USA
Has thanked: 2819 times
Been thanked: 749 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by wizard »

the transparency is sometimes only a simulation

Think in Bookworm Pup64 RC, Conky does not use a compositor, instead it uses a technique to take a shot of the desktop behind it, then use that as the background for Conky, which gives the illusion of transparency.

wizard

Big pile of OLD computers

User avatar
houndstooth
Posts: 229
Joined: Sun Jul 17, 2022 9:41 am
Location: U.S.A.
Has thanked: 12 times
Been thanked: 19 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by houndstooth »

wizard wrote: Wed Jun 28, 2023 12:28 pm

This looks like Fossapup64 9.5, if so, the transparent background is controlled by:
Menu>Desktop>JWMDESK Manager>Windows Effects. If that is disabled you will get a solid background.
Note that this would also apply to F96, but not to Bookworm

I haven't learned how to prevent losing Conky's background, it's triggered by common actions, like activating xlock, but restarting Window Effects restores it.

fernan
Posts: 144
Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2020 3:35 am
Has thanked: 54 times
Been thanked: 24 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by fernan »

In some of my Puppy installs, to make Conky transparent, I had to open any folder, right-click on the "eye" icon on the Rox task bar to create thumbnails, click again to deactivate, and conky becomes transparent again.

In other computers, I removed the conkystart script from the /root/Startup/ folder, located in other folder, added a link to the desktop, and started it manually after the system is up for some seconds. That way, Conky starts transparent.

User avatar
houndstooth
Posts: 229
Joined: Sun Jul 17, 2022 9:41 am
Location: U.S.A.
Has thanked: 12 times
Been thanked: 19 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by houndstooth »

@fernan Autostart is a handy shortcut but simply restores the default backdrop from a blank pinboard background.

Thumbnails don't make a difference.

The remedy is still restarting Windows Effects but the solution is in the cause.

Like xlock, another trigger is the Exit -> Shut Down sequence.

TerryH
Posts: 679
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2020 2:08 am
Has thanked: 172 times
Been thanked: 171 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by TerryH »

I don't currently have a FossaPup installation, the following may work on FossaPup.

When I used to have problems with transparency, it was identified the actual program which sets the wallpaper is a program set_bg. (You can check if set_bg is in Fossapup by running which set_bg in a terminal). When run from a terminal it will set the wallpaper. If you use the existing image shown in the Puppypin. You can pass a different file name, which will also update the image stored in the PupyPin. Running this will set the wallpaper, which should then fix the transparency problem. Run the program in a terminal: set_bg /path/to/image

Example:
set_bg /usr/share/backgrounds/default.png

Edit: Running the program without passing an Image file to the program will wipe out the wallpaper. It is easily corrected by passing a valid file name or using the wallpaper update program in the Desktop Menu

New Laptop - ASUS ZenBook Ryzen 7 5800H Vega 7 iGPU / 16 GB RAM

User avatar
takenp
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:38 am
Has thanked: 79 times
Been thanked: 16 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by takenp »

In my case it was picom that I had to start to get conky background transparent
all other options didn't work

  • Fossapup64 | Nvidia drivers

=~=~=~=~
I'm running online-radio called Melodymaker
Listen it here https://radio.melodymaker.org

User avatar
PipzDex
Posts: 193
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 11:16 pm
Location: Mexico
Has thanked: 61 times
Been thanked: 83 times

Re: What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

Post by PipzDex »

houndstooth wrote: Tue Jun 27, 2023 3:11 pm

This happens unintentionally:

Hi @houndstooth

The transparency effect in conky is not real, it is rather a simulated effect where it copies the wallpaper and thus gives that appearance mentioned

Logically within puppy there is a program called picom that gives a transparency effect but it does not always work since within the conky file there are a series of configurations that can block the desired function

this is a sample of my conky.rc

Within your conky.rc they must be configured with the following parameters that I indicate with arrows (there are 4)

background = true, <------------
own_window_transparent = true, <------------
own_window_argb_value = 0, <------------
own_window_argb_visual = false, <------------

if you like you can install this pet that brings more variety of conkys

ConkyManEdt-1.13.8

I show you my screen
regards

Screenshot.jpg
Screenshot.jpg (85.73 KiB) Viewed 145 times

Pentium (R) 2.20GHz I RAM: 8.0 GB I F96-CE_5 I Kernel 6.6.8-64oz-ao I Glibc: 2.31 I 1600x900 Px

My Puppy Stuff and more

Post Reply

Return to “Users”