"Remember this little guy, the orangish icon that appears in
your upper GNOME panel in Debian Lenny when you have software
updates?
"Ubuntu has a similar yet different icon (which you can see in
the screen-grab below this paragraph). Or had it, I guess. Now that
the Ubuntu Project decided to completely change the way users are
notified of software updates, opening an update window either in
the foreground or background (I seemed to get both at random) at
some point during the week the update is released, the cheery
orange (or whatever color it used to be in Ubuntu) icon doesn't get
much play.
"I like the software-update icon. I know what it means. If I
didn't know, I could either mouse over it, or actually click it to
determine its purpose in my computing life and act accordingly.
"I wasn't fond of those randomly opening update windows in
Ubuntu Karmic. (Did they have them in Jaunty also? Who can
remember?) You see, sometimes I turn the computer on, after which
it checks the repos for updates and puts the orange icon on my
upper panel."