There were a few patches to the actual XBMC code, I think the biggest
chunk was the stuff for switching between XBMC and other apps. I have
been running XBMC from the xbmc-svn PPA without issue (well at least
until I hit a package conflict with the latest build). One thing to
watch out for is the video rendering mode settings. For some reason
when the renderer was set to auto, XBMC was choosing VDPAU on me which
led to a crash everytime I tried to watch a video, setting it to GLSL
cleared things right up.
As far as the direct shutdown goes it should be a quick patch to the
skin to directly call the shutdown just as Ugo mentioned.
On a side note, I'll be eagerly awaiting the new 9.10 based image.
What I would really like to see is a tool that allows easy backup/
restore/migration of a user's home directory. Something simple built
with python/gtk maybe that you could pop in the USB drive, run the
app, specify the device to pull from and the image to push into, then
the app would just copy your home directory from the thumb drive into
the img file. Then you could just write the new img to the thumb
drive and be all set. I don't know how other users are handling
things, but my primary solution to keep the LINK OS fitting on the
thumb drive and still have expandability is to use my external 1TB
drive which holds my movies as a place to also store any large sets of
hidden application data and then symlink from the thumb drive. It
keeps me from having to reconfigure applications to look for data in a
non standard location. Anyway, it's just a thought.