Everyone knows the importance of keeping their operating system up-to-date, but in Ubuntu, I hate it when the ‘Software Updater’ opens up and sticks itself onto the ‘Application Launcher’, a major distraction.
A better alternative would be to simply notify the user through a simple notification, but that is not how it is done in Ubuntu (yet). However, if you too find this to be an issue, then the ‘update-notifier’ indicator is a good alternative.
As shown below, once it is installed, whenever there are updates available, it simply notifies the user using a notification bubble (including the number of available updates). And when you click on its icon, then you can directly launch the built-in ‘Software Updater’ of Ubuntu, for actually installing them.
If you find, even its execution of a notification bubble to be a distraction, then you can disable it (by un-checking ‘Show notifications’ from the menu) and afterwards, you will only be notified of available updates by displaying the indicator’s icon on the Top Panel.
This is only available for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS & 13.10. The installation is pretty simple. First you have to add its PPA to the system and then install it. For that, please follow the below procedure.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:foresto/ubuntutweaks
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install update-notifier
For the indicator to work, you have to first disable the ‘Software Updater’ from launching automatically, by using the below command:
gsettings set com.ubuntu.update-notifier auto-launch false
For the changes to apply, logout and re-login. That should do it.
