What does seahorse do?

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sat, 2008-11-29 at 20:46 +0000, Adam Funk wrote:
> f-spot, which I don't use and have never been able
> to configure to shut up and not auto-run when I plug my camera or
> camera card into the laptop.

In any file manager window: Edit -> Preferences -> tab Media.

> How bad is it that I don't have ubuntu-desktop installed?  Should I
> install it before I upgrade to 8.10, and then purge f-spot and
> seahorse again?

It doesn't matter if you don't have it installed. It's only purpose is
to ensure that a whole "Ubuntu System" is installed.

However, you absolutely have to install it prior to upgrading to a new
release. Otherwise, important parts of the newer system might not get
installed.
If you go the unsupported route with changing sources.list and running
"apt-get dist-upgrade", you are responsible for this yourself (like for
many other things).
If you go the supported and recommended route of using update-manager,
then this will be taken care of automatically.

It always pays to read the release notes [1] and follow the instructions
[2] (which these days only describe the supported ways)

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading (linked from [1])