This software is dead in Ubuntu 20.04, unless you feel like using an older version of VLC or VLC via
snapd. Lack of maintenance and incapability of using Qt4 without removing VLC had made this guide difficult to use, and in my opinion invalidates it from hereon until a solution is found. Apologies for the inconvenience.The specific thing which kills it:
x-terminal-emulatoroutput fornotifyosdconf:notifyosdconf: error while loading shared libraries: libQtGui.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Introduction
It might seem silly at first; Why replace the notification daemon when MATE's daemon is good enough? Because it isn't good enough. It'll never be good enough. Know why? Because you can mod notify-osd, which is something you can't do with the supplied themes mate-notification-daemon installs.
If you're alright with the default daemon, then by all means ignore this guide. But if you want to have one you can customize and control til' your heart's content, then follow along and you'll have a notification display you can have a fair degree of control over. You can even make it match the colour of your desktop, just like on vanilla Ubuntu.
⛙ Pre-emptive patching
You can install notify-osd as it stands right now. But that won't do, because there's a patched version which exists that allows you to modify how it looks. Instead of installing it straight away, perform these following commands;
x-terminal-emulator:sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:leolik/leolik sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 sudo apt update sudo apt install -y notify-osd notifyosdconfig libqtgui4
Not only will this install
notify-osd, but also the customization software
Special information for Artful Aardvark onward
If using this PPA beyond 17.04, then you have to modify the source list after following this advice. As follows:
In your preferred text editor
@
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/leolik-ubuntu-leolik-*.list:
Replace:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/leolik/leolik/ubuntu artful main # deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/leolik/leolik/ubuntu artful mainWith:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/leolik/leolik/ubuntu zesty main # deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/leolik/leolik/ubuntu zesty main
You also have to append onto the webupd8 repository. As shown:
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/nilarimogard-ubuntu-webupd8-*.list:
Append:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nilarimogard/webupd8/ubuntu zesty main # deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/nilarimogard/webupd8/ubuntu zesty main
sudoin a terminal. If you would rather begin paths withadmin://for GNOME GVFS, you would then need to know the exact version of Ubuntu you are on and replace the asterisk with its codename. You can find this information inmate-system-monitorunder the system tab. As an example; if on 19.10, replace*witheoan.
Superseding the daemon
After, you'll need to make notify-osd the daemon in use instead of mate-notification-daemon. To do this, perform the following as admin / superuser:
This is where I would normally say Save the old version as something else, but because of how little is involved, you can just comment out the old exec line and instead use this;
/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.mate.Notifications.service:
Replace:Exec=/usr/lib/mate-notification-daemon/mate-notification-daemonWith:
#Exec=/usr/lib/mate-notification-daemon/mate-notification-daemon Exec=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/notify-osd
You could instead replace the exec line completely, save it as something else, rename the old file and make a link but that's quite fussy for a single line of text. Either way, when you are done making your changes sign out, then sign back in. When you do notify-send 'text1' 'text2' you should see that your notifications look different. That's the result we wanted. Now, we can have some fun with them;
Customizing notifications
Leolik's patched notify-osd can be edited with notifyosdconf if you installed the notifyosdconfig package. It is also accessible from the Applications menu as NotifyOSD Configuration in Accessories.
notifyosdconf lets you change a lot of things. Here's a quick reference for each tab;
Behaviour
Position reference, location on screen, timeout, close on click, fade on hover
Bubble
Vertical and horizontal position fine-tuning ("gap"), colour, use of desktop colour, opacity of colour, icon size, gauge size (sliders and such), notificaton width, notification radius
Text
Title text margin (really notification margin), title size, title font weight, title colour, title opacity, body size, body font weight, body colour, body opacity, body shadow (applies to title also)
Caveats and differences
For some reason notify-osd gauges are not in effect, ergo the gauge size value is rendered irrelevant. Everything else works, and there should be no problem for any software relying on libnotify4. Main differences from mate-notification-daemon are the lack of displayed timers, and maybe a lack of buttons in notifications.
notifyosdconf was previously headed and maintained by Amandeep Grewal, it's now maintained by Alin Andrei.
Information sources
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=126670
Corrections
lah7 provided some important information about notifyosdconf and location of notify-osd for the exec line. Since everything worked, I assumed everything was fine; I was very wrong.
I also fixed up information about opening text files as admin, and added libqtgui4 as a package to install because I encountered an error about that in Eoan.
