QUESTION :
I often run a Linux guest on a Windows host, to let me use the Bash command line (through SSH and port forwarding). When I am on a full Ubuntu environment I like to use something such as notify-send to let me know when a task is finished:
./runlongtask.sh && notify-send "long task finished"
Is there any way to have similar functionality such that I can do that from inside Putty (which has SSHd to the guest Linux instance) and the notification appears on the Windows desktop even if I am in another program?
From my Mac days I am aware of Growl and the fact that it had a network protocol – did this actually get anywhere, or is there a newer cross-platform solution that would let me send an alert from an SSH session on one machine to a Desktop on another?
(I don’t want to use X11 for this)
ANSWER :
Growl exists on Windows, too.
To send notifications from Linux, install gntp-send, or hack something together using one of many GNTP modules.
If you are having trouble building gntp-send due to autoconf issues it might be easier to just build a copy of my fork since it doesn’t depend on autoconf. I’m not sure what features mattn has added but for basic usage it should be sufficient.