Desktop Clock

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newyorkpaulie
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Desktop Clock

Post by newyorkpaulie »

Currently using Linux Mint 20.3 Una on my Thinkpad T61.
I'm looking for a simple, small (1 inch square) desktop analog clock. The taskbar one is getting harder to read as each year passes (84). I don't want any bells and whistles: not timer, stopwatch, date, etc. something like this...
clock.png
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Last edited by LockBot on Fri Jul 28, 2023 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Running Linux Mint Mate 20.3 on a T61 ThinkPad.
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karlchen
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by karlchen »

Hello, newyorkpaulie.

Linux Mint comes with a tiny application pre-installed, named xclock.
You might try the following commandline: xclock -update 1 & and decide whether xclock is good enough.
Provided it is, adding xclock to the Startup Applications would not be too difficult.
xclock.png
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Karl
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rene
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by rene »

Alternatively I remember a clock "desklet" being immediately available on Cinnamon.

On MATE rickNS still semi-recently offered this answer viewtopic.php?p=1707111#p1707111 but I see that the there mentioned PPA is very, very dead. Maybe he has kept tabs on how to do this more recently.
rickNS wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 9:04 pm
newyorkpaulie
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by newyorkpaulie »

Thanks Karl,
It's up and running.
Running Linux Mint Mate 20.3 on a T61 ThinkPad.
Kseanfitz_1
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by Kseanfitz_1 »

Try Xdaliclock, it is found in the Software Manager.
Don't forget to check the man page at... https://manpages.org/xdaliclock
preview at... https://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/
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rickNS
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by rickNS »

rene wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:07 pm
On MATE rickNS still semi-recently offered this answer viewtopic.php?p=1707111#p1707111 but I see that the there mentioned PPA is very, very dead. Maybe he has kept tabs on how to do this more recently.
No I have not, and sadly as I thought some of those screenlets were quite useful. I mentioned using them in Mint 9 when I first started with Mint I needed a temp sensor displayed on screen, and screenlets was the perfect answer.
I did just check out of curiosity, and it seems some (most) of those packages are no longer available ?
Mint 20.0, and 21.0 MATE on Thinkpads, 3 X T420, T450, T470, and X200
rene
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by rene »

I'm afraid I know nothing of eye candy such as desklets/screenlets generally and triply nothing specifically in the context of MATE so I thought I'd try and pull you in. Yes, that stuff appears rather dead.

Guess OP's stuck with clunky xclock :)
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shedyed
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by shedyed »

Suggested cairo-clock on this forum recently. Easy to set up, and lots of custom skins to make your hardware look 21 st century, not60s retro.

Xclock has its place in history, but that's not where your clock will come from. What, digging through archives and dumpster diving is your workout of choice. Macslow wrote it then still works for me now.

Today's your lucky day. I can email you the Debian package. THEN search for themes eg. SWISS railroad, classic Rolex, whatever. I used to set up 4 time zones like a news channel when I had the widescreen. But now I have the convertible laptop and my needs have scaled down just a wee bit. Let me know if there's an email in your future
gcristof
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by gcristof »

I've been searching a while for a Date/Time "desklet" that always stays on top, but had no luck getting one to work until today.. For some reason I couldn't get cairo-clock to work on Mint MATE 21.1, but found this nice alternative that is working really well called Hoverclock: https://github.com/kostoskistefan/hoverclock

It has a digital look tho, not analog.. You can control the transparency, font, and position it anywhere on your desktop.

It places a small Notification badge in the Mate Notification panel that you can click to toggle Hide/Show the clock if necessary. A minor issue I had was that it's supposed to display a Preferences dialog when you right-click on that notification badge, but that's not working for me. Luckily, you can bring up it's Preferences from the command line with: "hoverclock -c".

By default it shows the time in 24 hour format, but I was able to change the time format string to "h:mm a", and that works to show the time as 12-hour am/pm. It shows two lines with the Time displayed over the Date - that does Not seem to be configurable.

Here's a screenshot showing it at the top of my screen - I intentionally placed my Firefox window partially over it to show how it displays both on my desktop and on top of the browser title bar.
hoverclock-screenshot.png
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shedyed
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Re: Desktop Clock

Post by shedyed »

There you have it, ladies and gents: digital and analog choices.

Then there is cairo-clock. I would fire up a live USB session with your preferred desktop (Xfce, Cinnamon, whatevs) see if the deb installs properly (no reason it shouldn't) then search for a proper theme e.g. Swiss train station, Rolex, Echee, Tokyo train station, daVinci, etc.

Also try changing the size to see which is the least obtrusive. Right click on the clock face to pop up the helpful properties dialog
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