weird problem with Gnome(solved)

[Asimov]

i'm trying to install conky, and the application seem to believe that i am using the root desktop while i am in a user mode

madmac@madmac-P5QL-PRO ~ $ conky
Conky: desktop window (1000023) is subwindow of root window (15a)
Conky: drawing to desktop window
Conky: drawing to double buffer

And it's not the only bizarre thing: I can launch enlightenment with a user, but not with the root.

[HughT]

Hi Asimov, I get a similar result. I can only assume it's normal.

hugh@hugh-Evo-N610c ~ $ whoami
hugh
hugh@hugh-Evo-N610c ~ $ conky
Conky: desktop window (12000b5) is subwindow of root window (6b)
Conky: window type - desktop
Conky: drawing to created window (0xa00001)
Conky: drawing to double buffer

The top command shows that conky is running on my account, not root.

hugh@hugh-Evo-N610c ~ $ top

top - 23:48:15 up 2:31, 3 users, load average: 0.25, 0.33, 0.45
Tasks: 128 total, 1 running, 127 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.7%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 94.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1025096k total, 895360k used, 129736k free, 43484k buffers
Swap: 1023996k total, 60k used, 1023936k free, 384176k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
836 root 20 0 169m 76m 9.9m S 3.0 7.7 23:30.08 Xorg
15868 hugh 20 0 72444 4068 3160 S 1.7 0.4 0:01.05 conky
1863 hugh 20 0 91192 10m 7804 S 0.3 1.0 0:06.06 cpufreq-applet

I've not worried about it. regards

[Asimov]

Finally a got the explication. the "root window" really mean the first layer of a desktop. With the gnome version of mint, it means the layers with all the icons of the menu.

[HughT]

Excellent that information may be useful to others with the same question in future. Don't forget to mark the post as solved, regards