SIMONM  Although GeekTool can do some awesome stuff, you really do need to be a geek to be able to use it.

I downloaded after seeing some cool desktops online but was surprised to find that it doesn't actually come with any scripts at all or any kind of ability to access scripts online, leaving novices dazed and confused about what to do next.

What's more, the developer doesn't have a repository of scripts on their homepage or even a forum for users to discuss and share their scripts. This leaves you with the only option of trawling the net to find examples of good scripts, which frankly seems like more effort than it's worth!

A little more help for novices and a few example scripts would go a long way, but I guess the geek attitude is you have to learn these things the hard way!  
(Version 3.0rc5)

ITISTODAY  While I'm happy to see this is finally being updated, there are still several problems, and one of them is quite unforgivable:

- GeekTool is currently taking up 200MB of RAM. This is unacceptable and makes it unusable for me. Such a small problem should not take up so much RAM. NerdTool by comparison takes up only 16.6MB (that could probably be improved too, but it's certainly better than 200).

- You can't put a drop shadow on the text from a shell script.

- You can't customize terminal colors as you can with NerdTool. I.e. I don't like what it picks for the default green, it'd be nice if that was something I could change.

- There's no way to change advanced text output like line spacing.

On the plus side though, unlike NerdTool, you when it says "stay on top", your tools will stay above the menubar which is very useful for doing stuff like replacing MenuMeters.  
(Version 3.0rc5)

NICOLASD  Love this little program. So glad it's back and updated!  
(Version 3.0rc5)

ESTNYC  As much as I'd love to have a newer, shinier Geektool, I had to turn this off. It doesn't use much RAM, but it ballooned to using 35 GB (yes GB) of virtual memory, slowing my iMac to a crawl. Maybe next release...  
(Version 3.0rc4)

CH5719  Is there a way to import the old settings? The idea of setting this up all over again kinda makes me sweat  
(Version 3.0 RC1)

GIOVANNI LANZANI  It's really great, however if a display the output of

top -ocpu -FR -l2 -n20 | grep '^....[1234567890] ' | grep -v ' 0.0% ..:' | cut -c 1-24,33-42,64-77

it doens't justify it, even if the terminal does (this holds also if I put the above inside a script).  
(Version 3.0 RC1)

BLACKSMITH_TB  The all-new (Leopard or better) GeekTool 3 is in beta:

http://thememymac.com/2009/geektool/more-on-geektool-3/  
(Version 2.1.2)

YULETIDE  Loved this app back in the day (like last year) but lack of developer support has left it buggy and increasingly irrelevant... off to give MkConsole a try  
(Version 2.1.2)

MNTBIGHKER  If you run most of the time on Leopard as non-admin neither Geektool or MKconsole can show you /var/log/system.log because of lack of permissions. Somehow Console.app manages to in "Log Database Queries" but NOT directly. Is any of this registering with anyone? I am torn between thinking you should not have routine access to system.log as a regular user, but I also need to see it, so for convenience I would like to solve this.  
(Version 2.1.2)

BALTHAMOS  I'm running Leopard (10.5.1) on a MBP and I have been having sleep issues with Geektool running. Of course, I can close the lid and it will fall asleep, but if Geektool is running and I just let the Power Saving preferences take it's toll, it doesn't fall asleep.

If the refresh time on a GT entry is greater than the sleep time, the machine will fall asleep. But that kind of eliminates the whole purpose of the utility if I can only refresh every 10 minutes. Does anyone have a solution to this problem, or at least experience the same problem I'm having?  
(Version 2.1.2)

XYZ043  GeekTool 2.1.2 kept crashing my PB G4 1.67 GHz DL when waking from sleep on 10.5.   
(Version 2.1.2)

10BASE-T DEV  doesn't run for me with Tiger 10.4.6 on MacBook Pro  
(Version 2.1.2)

ANONYMOUS  Love GeekTool. Note to developer (assuming you are still working on this amazing little preference pane): Under Tiger, I get these messages in the system log.

/Library/PreferencePanes/GeekTool.prefPane/Contents/Resources/GeekTool.app/Contents/MacOS/GeekTool: The function CGSDictionaryObjectForKey is obsolete and will be removed in a Tiger update. Unfortunately, this app, or a library it uses, is using this obsolete function, and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system performance.

It would seem this would be a minor API change to make to the app to make it more compatible with Tiger. Here's hoping for continued development on one of my favorite little utilities.  
(Version 2.1)

BOB  GeekTool is simply fab for running on servers, where you can display the secure.log file on the desktop, and see people log in real time.

Magic, and many many thanks!  
(Version 2.1)

ANONYMOUS  I wrote a perl script that formats the text oupt with \t. Looks good in the shell but in GeekTool ignores the text formatting and squishes all the text together  
(Version 2.1)

KHERTAN  Just one thing to say ... IT S ROCKS !

Thank to the developpeur ... hey bart_ ! ;) Don't slow your mac as konfabulator ... ... really great !!!  
(Version 2.0)

ERIK ABLESON  A fabulous little utility, that makes it very easy to keep track of lots of stuff at the UNIX layer of your Mac - or even several machines if you have mounted their drives remotely.

Being able to keep a running look at my console, network config, process list and top -u summary all on screen is wonderful. Combined with a second set that monitors the console and various access logs on my server, I can keep up to date with the current state of affairs of my network with a simple hide others from the finder.

Thh ability to have multiple sets is really handy, and with the opacity setting of the various panes I can still see the desktop picture. Color coding the sets makes it easy to identify which system I'm looking at. Very slick.

Now all I need to test out is if I can run Xback behind it (slightly disturbing idea) and to find a useful graphic online to try out the graphic option.

My only desire is the option to define whether a pane should implement word wrap or not, but that's a minor beef.  
(Version 2.0)

RAY  I've been running GeekTool for a few weeks now and must say this is one nifty little piece of software.

having said that, the geektool menu seems a little twitchy, sometimes not highlighting properly, and when it's enabled the finder doesn't always open a new window when clicked in the dock. (it's taken me this long to make that connection and is not a big deal.) of course turning the menu off is as simple as clicking a checkbox, so this hardly warrants a serious complaint.

also, when playing games that change the screen resolution things get moved around and don't automatically return to their original positions. disabling and re-enabling seems to take care of it though, so again, not a biggie.

overall this is really good. two thumbs up. highly recommended. one of the few add-ons i'm really attached to.  
(Version 2.0)

JOE  I totally love this program. I keep trying to download the new version but the download won't work. Aargh.  
(Version 2.0)

KRISCHAN  nifty utility - I always use it to display the output of /var/tmp/console.log

so you can see what went wrong without the need to open console  
(Version 1.0)