(Modified 2011 Mar 27)
System monitors
conky
conky is a system monitor that I had seen on various distros, typically lighter ones. The monitor is pasted onto the desktop, and is highly configurable. To customize it, copy the default configuration file from /etc/conky, i.e,:
cp /etc/conky/conky.conf ~/.conkyrc
Briefly, the example .conkyrc file that I have here displays the following:
CPU usage and temperature
network download and upload rates
here, the rates are shown for wifi, i.e., device wlan0
to change to a wired network, change wlan0 to (generally) eth0
top CPU- and RAM- consuming tasks
power/battery state
gkrellm
gkrellm is a fancier monitoring program than procmeter below. I installed the following plugins:
gkrellm-hdplop
gkrellweather
gkrellm-x86info
procmeter
procmeter is a nice process-display tool. Lately, there have been taskbar or desktop applets that show similar information, but for processes such as disk access, such applets aren't always (easily) available.
The example .procmeterrc file that I have here displays things:
program and version
disk-read events
disk-write events
network traffic -- one option is turned on, and the other is commented out
Network.Byte_eth0-g (default) is for Ethernet (wired)
Network.Byte_wlan0-g (commented out) is for wifi
There are also options for colors and grid display, which are probably self-explanatory and/or boring.
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