[ Thanks to M. Fioretti for this link. ]
Conky is a graphical system monitoring tool for Linux.
It is normally used to show all kinds of data as text or diagrams
in the root window of your screen, in a much bigger and more
readable format than any panel may do. As the galleries on the
official website or at Scrnshots.com prove, Conky provides lots of
ways to customize your desktop and impress your friends.
Exchanging, tweaking, and discussing Conky configuration files can
be a lot of fun if you find the most common Linux environments a
bit too dull.In general, Conky may run on one computer but appear on the
monitor of another one, via SSH or Gnu Screen. Conky may also load
data from plain text files of any kind, from local logs to RSS
feeds or Web pages downloaded with w3m or other command line
tools.