To Linux newbies who have seen that geeky looking desktop system monitor but don't know what it is or how to get and install it, well it's called Conky and you too can easily have it, and you don't have to be a computer hacker to set it up.Here is a step-by-step guide on installing and configuring Conky on Ubuntu

Conky is one of my favorite applications for all of my Linux distros. It is a light-weight system monitor (according to the project page) that can monitor many different aspects of your computer. You choose what to monitor and you choose where the monitor is displayed on your desktop through use of a configuration file - .conkyrc.