How to install the new Jaunty notify-osd in Ubuntu Intrepid

So the next release of Ubuntu, 9.04 A.K.A. Jaunty has a new Popup notifier. If you want to try it out in Intrepid, follow these simple steps. I have to warn you its a lot of Terminal use, but don't get too intimidated, its really pretty easy. (screenshot from markshuttleworth.com)


A Flash example of the notifier mock-up can be seen here.


Here is an example I recorded of the notify-osd running in Intrepid. My desktop is heavily personalized, but don't let that get in the way of the example. youtube seems to hate my ogv video, theres a bunch of artifacts and the video jumps. in actuality my desktop is smooth as silk. Ive had a lot of requests as to my theme/background/icons etc. Find out more here in a previous post.


First step is to get the code. To do this, you're going to have to install bazaar. Bazaar (AKA bzr) can then fetch the code from launchpad. Bazaar is like git, svn, or cvs. If you want to find out more, visit this 5 minute introduction to bazaar.

$sudo apt-get install bzr

Next we need to actually get the notify-osd code from launchpad:

$bzr branch lp:notify-osd

Dont be alarmed if it reports that you need to log in to launchpad. The code should still be saved in the correct location. Its just reporting that if you used bzr to upload code there would be an error.


Now you should have the code saved on your drive, in your home folder. Specifically ~/notify-osd.
Next step is to compile the code. There is a script included, so its much easier then it sounds.
To compile the code, were going to have to get some dependencies.

$ sudo apt-get install gnome-common automake

Now that we have what we need, we can compile.

$sudo ./autogen.sh

That launches the script, which automatically configures the code for your kernel.
Next step- we make.

$sudo make

Edit: A big thanks to Derek in the comments. He ran $ apt-cache depends notify-osd within Jaunty for me to discover that the following dependencies are required:
libc6 libcairo2 libdbus-1-3 libdbus-glib-1-2 libgconf2-4 libglib2.0-0 libgtk2.0-0 libpango1.0-0 libpixman-1-0 libx11-6
If you get any dependency errors, then run this:
$ sudo apt-get install libc6 libcairo2 libdbus-1-3 libdbus-glib-1-2 libgconf2-4 libglib2.0-0 libgtk2.0-0 libpango1.0-0 libpixman-1-0 libx11-6


If you haven't had any errors yet, everything should be just about done.

To make use of the new notifier, first kill the old notifier (I used System monitor, but the command line can be used as well) Select notification-daemon and right-click, select kill process, or..

$killall notification-daemon

Next, we need to actually launch the new notifier:
Navigate to your ~/notify-osd/src directory.

$notify-osd

Thats it! Were done!

If you want to test out the new notifier, you can launch the send-test-notification.sh script by clicking it and clicking run, or by navigating to the ~/notify-osd/src directory and typing:

$ ./send-test-notification.sh

The example script above may look weird because there are a few errors in the script code. The call to the icon files is not properly linked. I dont know if thats just because someone changed something on launchpad and forgot to update it or what. Dont be alarmed though if it looks funky. Everything is working properly, its just the script thats messed up.

Don't worry about messing up your Intrepid install. We haven't made any permanent changes to your system, and when you restart your computer the old notifier will be back.
If you want to keep the changes every time you restart, you can just remove the old notification-daemon on startup, and replace it with the new notify-osd.

Script to make notify-osd run on restart:

$ gedit ~/.config/autostart/notify-osd.sh

...paste this in the file:

#!/bin/bash
killall notification-daemon
sleep 1
~/notify-osd/src/notify-osd

...then in terminal:

$ chmod +x ~/.config/autostart/notify-osd.sh

...then:

$ gedit ~/.config/autostart/notify-osd.desktop

...and paste this in the file: user name is the name of the session

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=notify-osd
Exec=/home/user name/.config/autostart/notify-osd.sh
Icon=system-run
Comment=
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Now, every time you restart xorg, (aka reboot, start new session, etc) you will have the new notify-osd run.


A few notes: You will need a proper Display Driver running, and Compiz enabled to make proper use of the new features such as transparencies. If you see something that Ive done wrong or that could be done better, don't hesitate to tell me in the comments. Also, when you end the old notifications-daemon it may break other daemons which are using it (i.e. cGmail). Simply restart the the cGmail daemon and it should work fine.