"It was important for us to get the feature out there, listen to what people had to say, make the changes, and respond to user requests," George said. "We want to make sure we're listening to that. We take user privacy very seriously."

The second big focus area in Ubuntu Linux 12.10 is applications, George told me.

Specifically, "we've added the ability to put Web apps into the local environment," he said.

So, for example, users can now put the icon directly into the Ubuntu launcher. Then, when they launch it, Ubuntu automatically opens a separate window with Gmail in it without requiring that users first launch their browser.