update-manager dropped from repository; friendly update method?

[Delan Azabani]

Hi all,

update-manager seems to have been dropped from the repository, as it's
under "Local or obsolete" on all my boxes. Is this an intended Ubuntu
change, moving away from the update manager?

I have read about software-center possibly acquiring more package
management features in future, but seeing as software-center doesn't do
updates yet, and this package drop happened in maverick, a stable
release, what will replace update-manager as the 'user friendly' package
update method?

By the way, update-notifier, which stayed in the repository, is now not
able to be installed because of its dependency on update-manager-core.

-- 
Thanks and best regards,
Delan Azabani
http://azabani.com/