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Edit: I read the article, this is covered a bit.

On Linux you can use `notify-send "title" "content"`. The only limitation it has is that you can't query the notification id to update or selectively dismiss it later.

Also, many terminals will have a visual alert instead/together with a sound: konsole does this, for instance.

Many Linux terminals can monitor for activity/silence/bell/process exit. Using these facilities, notifications can be done without modifying the script.

./dosomething && mail user -s job done

I use a shell script to flash the terminal background using OSC 11 — green or red depending on the last exit status.