Martin Dougiamas

Profile images for newer users should all be working again on moodle.org (it's running on the latest 1.9 code).

Make sure the "Authenticated Users" role has permission to view blocks ... moodle/block:view should be set to ALLOW (that's the default).

Not as such, but you may want to switch on the "My Moodle" feature ... that will make sure a user only sees the courses they are already enrolled in.

Some of those bugs you linked to have actually been fixed in 1.9, because of the general performance work (led largely by Martin Langhoff) which was precisely to help larger sites (and has delayed the release for another month or more).

The rest, well, I'm not personally in any hurry to release 1.9. Sometimes a release is what it takes to get people really testing the code. Yes, we need more people getting involved and helping us fix stuff!

See http://moodle.org/tag