One thing I have been missing since Gnome 2 was suceeded by the (IMO) horrible Gnome 3, is a tool tray notification icon for pending debian updates.

When someone continued Gnome 2 as MATE and MATE became available on debian, there was no notification tooltray icon to be found.

But now there is such a tooltray icon: pk-update-icon and since debian with MATE again is my primary desktop this I was something I was happy to discover.

When there are packages available, the icon looks like this:

Then you can either click on “Install updates” and use the GUI to inspect, and install the updates, or you can pop to a root terminal window do:

apt-get dist-upgrade

To install the pk-update-icon:

1. the apt-line for “jessie-backports”First ensure that you have the apt-line for “jessie-backports”, by adding the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list :

   deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free

2. Update APT to get the index files for “jessie-backports”, do the following command in a root command line window:

   apt-get dist-upgrade

3. Install pk-update-icon from jessie backports, give the following command in a root command line window:

   apt-get install -t jessie-backports pk-update-icon

   Answer yes to the question about if the install should proceed

4. Log out of the desktop and log back in, and the next time updates arrive the icon will show up, like in the screen shot above