Updates notifier

[Raphael Groner]

> Question: I now have a panel item called "Generic Monitor".  I am
> not entirely certain how to use it.

There's a sample for usage on the project page:
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel-plugins/xfce4-genmon-plugin

If not sure how to install, take a look at there:
http://joysofprogramming.com/install-xfce4-genmon-plugin-fedora-rhel/

>  Seems that both "pup" and
> "yumex" disappeared from EL6.

As said already, pup seems to be dead, in favour of PackageKit.
Try to use the yumex package from Fedora repos. It is quite good.
Though, yumex doesn't notify about available updates, automatically. You
could report that as a feature request.