Conky

:/I like the visual look, but the problem with Conky is that when you start changing colors or fonts in the same script (even though it's five scripts), it starts eating CPU like crazy.

The Colorful Conky Desktop | Lifehacker Australia 2009

Linux only: Conky is a free, open-source system monitor, but pegging it as just a CPU/memory/process watcher is a bit unfair.

Conky Puts Lightweight Ambient System Stats On Linux Desktops | Lifehacker Australia 2008

Access to tons of built-in, geeky tools like SSH/FTP servers; Built-in Conky display.

Battle Of The Thumb Drive Linux Systems | Lifehacker Australia 2008

Conky is a free download for Linux systems only; Windows and Mac users can get similar stats with Samurize and GeekTool, respectively.

Conky Puts Lightweight Ambient System Stats On Linux Desktops | Lifehacker Australia 2008

He is, apart from a certain pride in his musical accomplishments, a very good fellow; and so is Mrs. "Conky" -- an amiable and agreeable woman, whose only fault is an excessive anxiety for the comfort of her guests, leading her at times to forget, in the words of the Chinese proverb, that "inattention is often the highest form of civility."

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 Various 1898

In other words, if you run across a Python script or terminal app that does something cool and returns text results, it can fit in Conky.

Customise Conky For Ambient Linux Productivity | Lifehacker Australia 2008

"Oh no, sir; he's on the bridge now, and I ought to have relieved him before this," I replied, only thinking of poor "Conky" and his tea then for the first time.

The Ghost Ship A Mystery of the Sea Henry [Illustrator] Austin

"There's no ship there," echoed my friend "Conky," tapping his forehead in a very offensive way to intimate that I had "a screw loose in the upper storey," as the saying goes, grinning the while as I could see very well in the dim light and poking his long nose up in the air in supreme contempt.

The Ghost Ship A Mystery of the Sea Henry [Illustrator] Austin

No answer came this time, however, from my friend, Master "Conky," though he had been ready enough just now with his aggravating "quite so."

The Ghost Ship A Mystery of the Sea Henry [Illustrator] Austin

This, of course, at once changed the current of my thoughts; and so, without troubling my head any further about "Conky," I sang out as eagerly as before to the first mate, all the more anxious now to prove that I had been right in the first instance, "There she is, Mr Fosset, there she is!"

The Ghost Ship A Mystery of the Sea Henry [Illustrator] Austin