How to turn off Software updater? (Xubuntu)

Question

Is it possible to turn "Software updater" off? It pops up on startup every single time offering new (unwanted) updates. I have tried to set "don't check for updates" and all this kind of stuff in Software updater settings. But it still pops up.

It's annoying, could you advice how to get rid of it?

Solution 1

One of the easiest way I did to overcome from this problem is that you can remove update-notifier

sudo apt-get remove update-notifier

Please note that, this will remove only the graphic way to do system updates.. You can still do your upgrades using commands or Synaptic :)

You can always reply if you get in any trouble.. :)

Solution 2

Go to Settings > Session and Startup > App Autostart and uncheck Update Notifier. Also make sure that no other similar entry (like Synaptic) is enabled in that list. Take note that this will likely disable the automatic updating of the data from the package repositories.

Solution 3

Alternative CLI solution:

sudo crudini --set /etc/xdg/autostart/update-notifier.desktop 'Desktop Entry' Hidden true;

If you need crudini, then: sudo pip install crudini

Comments

[Admin]

what version of Xubuntu ?

[Admin]

You can remove it from startup applications list.

[landroni]

This is a bit extreme. Simply making sure that it doesn't autostart should suffice in most cases.

[Sebastian]

Thank you, I did it. I didn't unchecked it before because it had a synaptic icon, I overlooked it somehow. I hope it will work! Thank you!

[Sebastian]

Thank you, I will do that if previous way would not work. Synaptic will do the work for me. Thank you!

[NorthLattitude]

Frankly this is the best option. It works, and if you don't need the application, why have it installed at all? Disabling an app you dont plan to use seems silly, just remove it.

[Stephen Ostermiller]

I don't like this answer because the xubuntu-desktop package depends on update-notifier. If you ever apt install xubuntu-desktop you'll get update-notifier right back.

[Saurav Kumar]

@StephenOstermiller: Sure you can downvote if you don't like anything. It's all about your choice and your requirement.. And of course if you install xubuntu-desktop update-notifier will come by default. But that is a standalone package which you can update/remove/re-install anytime. :P

[Cerin]

If you want to complete remove all the update GUIs: sudo apt-get remove update-notifier update-manager

[David C.]

Yes, xubuntu-desktop depends on update-notifier, but that's not a big issue. xubuntu-desktop is simply a catch-all package to pull in the entire Xubuntu bundle. If you don't want the entire bundle (as would be the case if you're removing update-notifier) removing xubuntu-desktop won't break anything.

[Nav]

I couldn't find a "Session and Startup" option in Ubuntu 16.04.6. Hope this answer could be updated.

[Mike Robinson]

Remember that there's more than one available GUI environment in Linux so they might call it different things. In "xfce" on Ubuntu 18.04.1 it's called Session and Startup and there's a tab Application Autostart with an "Update Notifier" option. It's out there somewhere!

[Alexis Wilke]

Note that you don't need crudini, you can always edit ini files by hand.

[Alexis Wilke]

And the popup appeared, so that was useless, unfortunately.

[oemb1905]

Just because the maintainers add a bunch of other packages to their desktop environment does not in any way mean people are obligated to use them, forbidden from removing them, and/or that their use is required for the desktop environment. This is not a software dependency per se, rather it uses the apt dependency feature set to bring in a commonly used/desired package. Removing it is 100% user choice, and will have no negative impacts on your DE, whether xfce or otherwise. @StephenOstermiller