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1b1ed1a
(Get the code!)
Here's a scenario to consider:
I recently (successfully) switched my mom from Windows to Ubuntu Linux via her new laptop. An update pops up, and she runs it to get the recommended and critical updates. All is well. No restart notification. Then she tries to print a document, and the computer has lost all capability to print. Why? CUPS was updated, and needed a restart. I was able to diagnose this, but that is because I am luckily slightly more computer literate than my mom. In her mind, she had NO IDEA why the "printing suddenly stopped working on Linux." Crap like that happens all the time in Windows (or at least it did with 95, 98, XP and Vista).
We all expect gremlins in the Windows machine, but issues like this make it seem like there are gremlins in the Linux machine as well, when it may just be a lack of communication. I've seen it floating around the net that "Linux doesn't need to be restarted after updates." Which is a half-truth at best. I think Ubuntu needs to become very clear on which components require a restart whenever they are updated, and make sure update-manager or -notifier does its job to tell the user whenever that is the case.
The average user doesn't know how to restart GDM, or hal, or dbus, or CUPS, etc short of rebooting the entire system. Nor should they have to know how, if everything is functioning correctly.