Show and Manage Notes on your Linux Desktop with Conky

In this article I'll show you how display and manage a simple note list into linux desktop with conky.

Start installing conky on system. On Ubuntu simply:

sudo apt-get install conky

Conky is a simple application that show some custom information on your linux desktop. To run conky open a terminal and run:

conky

Without close terminal, on your desktop you can see some information about your system. Configure conky is not soo difficult, on-line there are many post related and generally all you have to do is edited the conky.config file. How customize your conky is off-topic, we limited to add a simple note list. Now will download the latest release of pyclinote, it allows to manage a list of notes using command line. Download the latest from here Extract the content of zip in a directory of your choice, for example: /home/user/pyclinote-1.0 In this directory create a file named starter.sh, this file will allow you to open the gui even from a key-shortcut

gedit /home/user/pyclinote-1.0/starter.sh

paste the following code, then save:

(cd /home/user/pyclinote-1.0 && python pyclinote.py -g)

Ensure that /home/user/pyclinote-1.0 is the directory contains pyclinote.py! Open a terminal and add execution permission to this file:

chmod +x /home/user/pyclinote-1.0/pyclinote.py

Before execute pyclinote we have to install the tkinter library for python:

sudo apt-get install python-tk

Now we can execute pyclinote:

cd /home/user/pyclinote-1.0
./starter.sh

You can add a note by typing on the text-box, then click add. Your note is now on the listbox. (the number on the left of your note is the note number identification)
The aim of this article is to show note list on your desktop, so edit the conky.conf file. In the latest version of conky this file located on /etc/conky/conky.conf

sudo gedit /etc/conky/conky.conf 

and add the following line on the bottom of the file:

${execi 2 (cd /home/user/pyclinote-1.0 && python pyclinote.py -s)}

However, ensure that /home/user/pyclinote-1.0 is the directory contains pyclinote.py. This line tells conky to execute (cd /home/user/pyclinote-1.0 && python pyclinote.py -s) every 2 seconds.
Your desktop, will show the note typing before!
In order to improve usability we have to run conky on startup and configure a key-shortcut opening the pyclinote GUI.
To run conky on sturtup:
Click the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of the top panel. Select Startup Applications. Click Add. In the resulting dialog box give the name as "Conky" and the command as conky. Click add and close.
To add the shortcut, go to System Settings → Keboard, select Shortcuts tab and add a new custom shortcut. Into message box insert the name of shortcut, ex: Notes and the command:

/home/user/pyclinote-1.0/starter.sh

So enter the key combination you choiche to open the pyclinote GUI.
References:

• Ubuntu shortcut
• SettingUp Conky
• PyCliNote
• Conky