The TRON-Inspired Desktop [Featured Desktop]

By Alan Henry Oct 13, 2011 5:00 AM 41,923 19

Flickr user asbrekenridge wanted a desktop that was informative and attractive. After spending some quality time with GeekTool, he put together this desktop that shows the time and date, a calendar, and available system resources at a glance.

If you have a Mac and want to get the same look on your desktop, here's what you'll need:

The TRON Desktop wallpaper from Rasmus NielsenNocturne from Blacktree to turn the menubar blackGeekTool to set up the geeklets for time, date, calendar, running processes, and system resources

Update: It looks like a similar desktop was posted to Mac OS X Tips by user baldrailers who reached out to share his page there, complete with all the geeklets he used to make it happen! Head over to download them there if you don't want to set them up from scratch.

You'll need to match the colors to the ones on the desktop, and while asbrekenridge didn't say which font he used, you can get the same effect with the font of your choice. If you're not familiar with how to set up GeekTool, check out our guide to setting up a great desktop with it. Most of the geeklets used here are also explained in our tutorial.

If you're a Windows or Linux user, you should be able to get the same effect with Rainmeter or Conky (respectively) to recreate the scene in your OS of choice.

Do you have a great, beautifully productive desktop of your own that you'd like to share? Go ahead and post it to the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group with a description of how you made it and it may be the next featured desktop.

Desktop | Flickr

You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+. Related Stories