How difficult would it be for the currently installed package names (ie. ssh, mplayer, canola etc.) to be "remembered" as part of the backup? Upon restoring the backup the user could then reinstall the same packages automatically.

The application restore function would simply be multiple "apt-get install --force-yes <packagename>" commands where <packagename> is one of the previously installed packages. The necessary repositories must be present prior to installation but these are already part of the backup. And it's unlikely the function would work across major OS upgrades (ie. upgrading from OS 2006 to OS 2007 would most likely result in problems, but a minor upgrading within the same OS version should work more or less 100%).

It's probably not a technically difficult feature to implement, and is merely a cosmetic/convenience function but it may help improve consumer acceptance. I guess I should add it to Bugzilla as an enhancement if anyone thinks it has legs.

A simple shell script could also do the trick - anyone know how to get the list of installed packages (the same list that appears in App Manager -> Installed Apps)? The script would dump the current packages to memory card prior to upgrade then read back the package names when re-installing the packages.