The following dependencies are needed: dbus libxinerama libxft libxss libxdg-basedir glib pango/cairo On Debian and Debian-based distros you'll probably also need the *-dev packages. With all dependencies present you can build dunst with: $ make If you're getting compilation errors after an update try compiling with the default config.h. If you didn't edit your config.h you can just delete it. and install with: $ sudo make PREFIX=/usr install