Suggestion for new repository of software - new versions, ofsoftware in between Ubuntu releases

[Benjamin Roe]

> 
> ALL the latest stuff is never stable.. that's just the way it is.  See
> firefox for example, ubuntu had to move off the latest.  So it will
> take a LONG time until you do a release if you follow that.
> 
> /Erik
> 

That's just simply not true. Firefox 1.0 is much more stable than 0.9.3,
and displays websites that 0.9.3 refuses to. The preview release had
some problems, which is why Ubuntu reverted to 0.9.3.

I can see that major version upgrades can bring new bugs along with new
features, but minor bug-fix updates, assuming decent regression testing,
will almost always be more stable.

As things stand, users using the default "stable" Ubuntu applications
will be struggling with bugs that were fixed upstream several months
before. I recognise that tracking point releases of user software is too
much work for the developers, but there must be a better solution than
just "sticking with the old stuff because it's stable".

As a trivial example (I have loads of other bugs like this),
sound-juicer doesn't read from the second cd drive properly if you have
more than one connected. It's an annoying bug in a simple app that's
fixed in the newest point release (0.5.14, instead of Ubuntu's 0.5.12).
Unless I want to download and install from source, an option many users
wouldn't even know exists, I'm stuck with the bug until Hoary releases,
despite the fact that the fix is already written and upgrading can have
no effect on the rest of the system.

Ben