KDE Daemon System Notification Helper annoyances
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KDE Daemon System Notification Helper annoyances
Updated: December 5, 2025
You would think Windows is annoying when it comes to its updates. But at least there's one entity<br>doing the updating, and if you handle it, you're sorted. Not so in Kubuntu, or most Plasma systems, I'm<br>afraid. Recently, especially since I installed and/or updated a bunch of systems to 24.04, I've been<br>seeing more and more restart required prompts. But not one. Nope. A torrent. A barrage of notifications<br>popping, one after another, sometimes three, sometimes eleven. And they would happen without my<br>intervention, which is alarming.
As it happens, I don't like automatic updates, so I keep them off. Or so I thought, because no<br>matter what I chose through the Discover GUI, Kubuntu would still ignore my wishes and occasionally run<br>a background update, and then annoy me with pointless messages, always when I don't want or expect<br>them. I found a second place to cull this unwarranted noise, but still, this wasn't enough. Then, a<br>third place. My oh my. In today's tutorial, I will show you how to get rid of the KDE Daemon update<br>reboot message deluge. After me, if you please.
Missing information
OK, let's assume the system is configured to auto-update. And there's an update that requires a<br>reboot. In that case, if there's a reboot prompt, I would expect it to tell me WHY it wants that.<br>Because if I'm not aware there's a background process running, then for that matter, you could have<br>"malware" updating your machine. Sure, the possibility of something like that is very low, but why the<br>opaqueness then?
A much more elegant solution would be to tell me what update requires the reboot. Cleaner, more<br>information, and an optional toggle to remove that notification. But if there's an "unattended" upgrade<br>running on my box, then yes, I need the details. When I run my own update, either through Discover or<br>on the command line, I can see the exact sequence of steps. Not so here. Not trivially anyway.
Of course, no Linux system is truly a system, more a collection of disparate parts barely working<br>together. This is why, if you want to get rid of this annoying popup, you need to edit THREE separate<br>configurations. Yup.
Step 1: Disable auto-updates through Discover
First, open the GUI package manager, click on the dots (the desktop "irony") to get into the<br>Settings. Alternatively, go through Settings > System Administration > Software Update. The thing<br>is, the "split" between Ubuntu and Kubuntu means the latter only has a cosmetic set of tools available<br>this way, whereas in the past, the (K)Ubuntu update manager utility let you enable/disable PPAs, enable<br>repo archives, install drivers and more. All of these are remnants of a better past, as the Linux<br>desktop has regressed since.
Set updates to Manually, leave notifications as you like, and of course, don't use that completely<br>unnecessary Offline updates nonsense, which gives you a "Windows like" update experience. But still,<br>this won't do much, as you will still be bombarded with the restart popups now and then.
As an aside, the old tool, which had everything:
From my Kubuntu 19.04 review. You can sort everything here, you don't need seven<br>places.
Step 2: Disable unattended upgrades service
Next, you need to disable the service that runs updates on its own.
sudo systemctl disable unattended-upgrades.service
But this only handles /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades. There's also 20auto-upgrades<br>scheduled task, and it will still run and install nonsense and annoy you.
Step 3: Disable apt auto-update configuration
You'd think the above is enough, but no. There are multiple services and scheduled tasks, all in<br>charge of more or less the same thing. The duplication and triplication comes from the fact Ubuntu and<br>Kubuntu are separate systems, so they all handle the updates, only differently. Furthermore, there's no<br>proper integration. The toggles you'd expect to work don't, and then the toggles you want don't exist.<br>And so forth. A mess.
Thus, the third and final piece. You need to actually tell apt not to do any auto upgrades. Go<br>to /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades, and open the file. Look for the following lines:
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";
Change those "1s" to "0s":
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";
And now, maybe, finally, hopefully, you won't be pestered anymore. Maybe ...
And that's the gist of it. No matter how the patching is now invoked - Discover, some update cron or<br>service or whatnot, another badly designed piece of GUI that does not belong, whatever - you won't be<br>bothered, and you will be able to run the updates when you like it, and reboot when you like it.<br>Speaking of overbearing and obtuse...