The redesigned Indicator Session landed in Ubuntu 12.10

Weeks ago, the developers published near-future plans related to Ubuntu indicators, with clear explanations about changes, refinements and reorganizations that are to land in the at-that-time next Ubuntu development cycle (Quantal Quetzal).

Indicator Session 12.10 has just landed in Ubuntu 12.10, starting the mentioned activity, activity that is to probably touch all of the Unity panel/top bar's indicators during the 12.10 development cycle.

The User Menu has been removed from the panel as a separate/distinct "entity", being partially merged into the Session Menu (summoned when clicking on the top bar's "cog" icons), meaning, the Switch User Account and User Accounts have been removed, probably due to their redundancy (the user accounts can be easily managed under System Settings-->System-->User Accounts).

Installing Ubuntu, especially by newcomers, can naturally trigger, for various reasons (is the new OS recognizing the correct amount of RAM memory, is the installed OS 32 or 64-bit, is a new CPU recognized, etc), a user intention related to computer informations stored by Ubuntu, intention easily satisfiable now via the first Session Menu's entry, About This Computer, clicking on it, summons the relevant informations from System Settings-->System-->Details-->Overview.

The second entry is Ubuntu Help, entry that houses 1-click away the option to open Ubuntu Yelp/Help, from where the user can plunge into clear, in-depth descriptions of basic knowledge about Unity, Dash, applications, how-tos, etc, definitely a proper place for freshmen, focused on discovering up-to-date Ubuntu-specific "bits".

Probably a long-awaited change is the landing of Restart as a 1-click option (as opposed to clicking and opening Shut Down, then clicking again for Restart) directly in the menu.

The mentioned changes, along with renaming Lock Screen to Lock and Shut Down to Switch Off, come to encompass a clean, more compact and user-friendly Indicator Session in Ubuntu 12.10.