14 DAY TRIAL // The notification system in Ubuntu has gone through very few modifications over the last few years and it's one of the areas that have remained untouched, which is not actually something that users might want. Still, it's possible to make some changes that should allow users to close the notifications and to move them to other areas of the screen.
The Ubuntu design team has been very firm about what it intends to do with the notification system, and that is completely nothing. Because of some strange reasons (which probably have more important roots than we can suspect), the Ubuntu design team and the developers have rejected all requests that had anything to do with the possibility of moving or closing notifications.
Not being able to do anything about the notifications is somewhat annoying. Imagine that you have multiple incoming messages, from Pidgin for example, and you can't close the notifications and you can't decide for how long they are going to be displayed. The messages need to be showed and they will keep popping up long after you ended the conversation.
This is a very simple problem to rectify, but not with Canonical's help. In fact, a third-party developer, Sukochev Roman (Leolik), has modified the notify-osd library so that it allows a series of tweaks. All you have to do is to add the PPA to your system and the library that he provides. Just open a terminal and enter the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:leolik/leolik sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
All the settings can be done through the terminal as well, but there is another, easier way. You will need to install a small app (GUI) called notifyosdconfig, which allows users to modify the settings for the notification bubbles. Open a terminal and enter the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:amandeepgrewal/notifyosdconfig sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install notifyosdconfig
Reboot the system and the new libraries should be in place. You will find notifyosdconfig in the Dash. It comes with many more features that cover the size, the color, the opacity, the locations, and some other options for the notification bubbles.
These are some of the features that should be integrated by default, or at least Ubuntu developers should allow users to modify them. Users shouldn't install apps and libraries from other developers to get a functionality that is default on most other systems.
Enjoy!