Change notification daemon on 14.04

Solution 1:

It seems there is no priority or a single setting point to set which freedesktop notification daemon to run. I got such problem with XFCE installed on Ubuntu 14.04.

Unity notification launch xfce4-notifyd as it was the default.

• Check for available notification services, example:

  $ grep -r org.freedesktop.Notifications /usr/share/dbus-1/services/
  /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.xfce4-notifyd.Notifications.service:Name=org.freedesktop.Notifications
  /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.Notifications.service:Name=org.freedesktop.Notifications
  

• Disable non needed ones, leave only the one you want:

  sudo mv /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.xfce4-notifyd.Notifications.service /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.xfce4-notifyd.Notifications.service.disable
  
  pkill xfce4-notifyd
  

• Check

  notify-send test
  

Unity notification style back (notify-osd)

Another way, Unity does not launch any default notifications daemon. So you can add the one you like to startup applications. See How do I start applications automatically on login?. I think it's better because it does not affect other desktop session that relays on the service file to start their notifications daemon.

Helpful Reference:

• ArchLinux Wiki: Desktop notifications