It all started with torsmo,a tool that monitors system variables.Torsmo is no longer maintained,which led to the creation of its fork called conky.Conky checks various system variables and plots graph based on the values.Conky is efficient and fast as it draws directly in the X window system.Conky is easily customisable and flexible.It is customisable as we can extend its functionality using the LUA programming language.Lets start with installing conky in ubuntu.