Comment 1 for bug 602053

A workaround to this bug could be manually patching and recompiling gnome-panel and gnome-desktop packages to add missing "Recent applications" functionality to gnome-main-menu. Below there is instruction for patching the packages . The commands, package names and versions used in the instruction are examples using current Ubuntu 10.04 amd64 version.

1. Download gnome-panel and gnome-desktop rpm source package from Opensuse repository.

For Ubuntu 10.04 packages from Opensuse 11.3 repository http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/11.3/repo/oss/suse/src/ should be fine.

current (as of writting this) packages to download would be:

gnome-panel-2.30.0-4.13.src.rpm
gnome-desktop-2.30.0-1.14.src.rpm

Place the packages for example in opensuse subdirectory.

2. Extract patches

From gnome-panel src.rpm extract:

gnome-panel-recently-used-apps.patch

From gnome-desktop src.rpm extract:

gnome-desktop-recently-used-apps.patch

You can use the following commands (or alternativelly for example file-roller):

cd opensuse
rpm2cpio gnome-panel-2.30.0-4.13.src.rpm | cpio -i gnome-panel-recently-used-apps.patch
rpm2cpio gnome-desktop-2.30.0-1.14.src.rpm | cpio -i gnome-desktop-recently-used-apps.patch
cd ..

3. Install build dependencies and get source packages

sudo apt-get build-dep gnome-panel
sudo apt-get build-dep gnome-desktop
apt-get source gnome-panel
apt-get source gnome-desktop

4. Patch and compile packages

Assuming that extracted patches are in opensuse subdirectory:

cd gnome-panel-2.30.2/gnome-panel
patch -p1 < ../../opensuse/gnome-panel-recently-used-apps.patch
cd ..
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..

cd gnome-desktop-2.30.2/
patch -p1 < ../opensuse/gnome-desktop-recently-used-apps.patch
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..

5. Optionally use deb-reversion to prevent from overwriting built packages during system upgrade

For libgnome-desktop it is fairy simple:

deb-reversion libgnome-desktop-2-17_2.30.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

the command should produce file:

libgnome-desktop-2-17_2.30.2-0ubuntu1LOCAL.1_amd64.deb

For gnome-panel, since it's changelog file is just symlink some workaround is needed:

cp /usr/share/doc/libpanel-applet2-0/changelog.Debian.gz /tmp
export LOGFILE=/tmp/changelog.Debian.gz
fakeroot deb-reversion gnome-panel_2.30.2-0ubuntu0.2_amd64.deb

the command should produce file:

gnome-panel_2.30.2-0ubuntu0.2LOCAL.1_amd64.deb

6. Install patched packages

example assuming that previous, optional point was performed (deb-reversion used):

sudo dpkg -i gnome-panel_2.30.2-0ubuntu0.2LOCAL.1_amd64.deb libgnome-desktop-2-17_2.30.2-0ubuntu1LOCAL.1_amd64.deb

7. Logout and login again to make the changes take effect. Now you can test the functionality - run an application that is not in your favourite list, it should appear at Recent applications list.