How to get conky to stay on the desktop

Seems like setting window type to desktop is not enough sometimes.

Try:

own_window_type desktop
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager

Got it from here.

Works for me in XFCE. I'm guessing it'll be fine for lxde/openbox as well.

This config works, on Gnome and Cinnamon and is the way to do it.

own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type dock
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_argb_value 100
gap_x 940
gap_y 20

The last 2 attributes absolutely position it on screen and need to be changed for your configuration. A working complete configuration file can be found here on Github.

Edit: From the comments: If own_window_type set to "dock" doesn't work well for you, try "override" and "normal" as well.

The above did not work for me. What did work was to set the "own_window_type" to "normal" in /etc/conky/conky.conf.

own_window_type normal

As per this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2039399