Comment 20 for bug 390508

@Matthew Paul Thomas: Here's an example. "Screen saver ON/OFF". Or a more interesting one: "The dog went out/came in." (I'm not kidding, a friend of mine has a sensor on the door flap.) Or "Weekly backup finished."

There are lots of oportunity for a knowledgeable Linux desktop user to customize various input triggers (mouse, keyboard, IR remote, proximity sensors, cron job exit status etc.) AND to make the desktop reacts nicely by providing feedback messages. I'm currently using various -osd console tools for this purpose. I was hoping I could use notify-send as a drop in replacement, since it's the hot new thing.

But being forced to stare at a message for 5 or 10 seconds, a message consisting of a few short words and an icon? A message I see all the time and I don't even have to actually read anymore, just glance at? Yeah, I know it becomes transparent if you mouse over but that's not the same as going away and not bothering me, is it?

Clearly, someone somewhere is thinking that the way *they* use notify-osd is the only possible way anybody could ever use it. Whereas more humble people, like the ones who wrote gnome-osd and didn't presume to dictate me how I should use it, are having me use *their* tool. Because it works and doesn't try to think for me.