Desktop notification when long running commands complete

As far as I understood you want a wrapper. And you want to use a command through it so that it will give you desired notification if running time of your command is more than 15 sec. So here is it.

wrapper(){
    start=$(date +%s)
    "$@"
    [ $(($(date +%s) - start)) -le 15 ] || notify-send "Notification" "Long\
 running command \"$(echo $@)\" took $(($(date +%s) - start)) seconds to finish"
}

Copy this function in your ~/.bashrc and source ~/.bashrc as,

. ~/.bashrc

Useage

wrapper <your_command>

If it takes more than 15 sec you will get the desktop-notification describing the command and its time of execution.

Example

wrapper sudo apt-get update

In ~/.bashrc there is an alias alert defined as:

alias alert='notify-send --urgency=low -i "$([ $? = 0 ] && echo terminal || echo error)" "$(history|tail -n1|sed -e '\''s/^\s*[0-9]\+\s*//;s/[;&|]\s*alert$//'\'')"'

which can be used to notify the completion of command execution.

Usage:

$ the_command; alert

e.g.

$ sudo apt-get update; alert

You may customize the alias as per your need and desire.

You want https://launchpad.net/undistract-me (installable from the Ubuntu archives with sudo apt-get install undistract-me) which does precisely what you're asking for, including working automatically (that is, without having to remember to add something extra to potentially long-running commands).