GUI Notification

[Lukas Sabota]

Hello!
    Ubuntu (and Linux in general) seems to have a lack of communication 
between command-line and graphical user interface.  Many times, things 
fail through the command-line, giving the user no notification of why.  
Here are a couple examples:
    A program is run through a launcher in GNOME (through a menu, or 
through a desktop icon.)  This program fails to run because the binary 
cannot be found.  The user is given no notification of any gone wrong, 
everything seems to proceed as normal, but his or her application never 
starts.
    Here's another example:  A backup script is being run by cron, and 
it fails because the destination directory cannot be found, or something 
similar.  The user assumes that the backup was completed successfully, 
and moves on with his life.  Root broadcasts, or messages from write,  
are also examples of where the user running a GUI is missing 
information.  The are lots of examples of where this problem is faced.
    A software solution is required for this problem.  A program is 
needed to do a few things:
    1)  Decide whether the user is in an X session or a console login.
    2)  Display the message accordingly:  Either using standard console 
output or a MsgBox() sort of function based on GNOME.

What do you think about this problem?  Is there a solution currently 
available?  I'd like your thoughts on this problem, thank you.

God Bless,
Lukas