Luckily, you can turn off this pop up feature easily and switch back to the old icon-appear-at-system-tray mode. Open up a terminal, type This will load up the gconf editor window Navigate to “Apps -> Update Notifier”. On the right, unchecked the “auto_launch” box. Close the window. That’s it. To recover the auto launch pop up function, simply repeat the above step, but place a check in the auto_launch box.

Alternative method (via the terminal)

If you are just plain lazy, here’s a much easier step. In your terminal, type the following command: To recover: