Ubuntu Update Notifier’s behavior makes me crazy

Okay, so it’s not exactly new, but “The behavior of Ubuntu Update Notifier’s since the 9.04 release that I have not bothered figuring out how to fix for the last year drives me crazy” seemed like too long a title for this post.

Anyway, the old behavior was that when updates to the OS or any installed-from-the-repositories applications were available, you’d get a little icon in the notification area. Clicking the icon would bring up the Update Manager.

In 9.04, they changed it so that instead of generating the notification area icon, Update Manager would open automatically. I guess the idea was that the notification icon (and perhaps its associated notification bubbles) was too annoying, or that people were likely to ignore it and end up with unpatched, out-of-date systems. That’s fine, except that Update Manager opens somewhere in the background. What keeps happening to me is that at some point, while switching windows or desktops, I discover it’s been sitting there for god knows how long with a bunch of updates that I need to run.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to restore the old behavior. In Gnome’s Configuration Editor, go to the update-notifier section under “apps” and uncheck the “auto_launch” box:

After that, hey presto! You get the notification icon whenever updates are available.