packages history

Both Synaptic and Ubuntu Software Center have useful tools for viewing the changes you've made to your system -- the packages you've installed, updated, and removed.

Here's what Synaptic looks like when you navigate to File > History:

And, Ubuntu Software Center:

One advantage of Ubuntu Software Center is that you can get a separate breakdown of installed, updated, or removed packages:

However, note that Ubuntu Software Center doesn't show the linux-image removal that I did, while Synaptic does:

And, it's easy to paste history from Synaptic into a text file, which I can't do from Ubuntu Software Center:

Ubuntu Software Center looks great, and it appears that they've done a great job with it. But for Debian-based distros (including Ubuntu), and for my purposes, Synaptic is still the best all-around GUI front-end for apt-get. It's still one of the first things I add when I install Ubuntu, and for now I'll continue to use it instead of Ubuntu Software Center.