Can I use more recent versions of applications than what is in the repositories?

[Derek Broughton]

Dave M G wrote:

>> Although you will have to wait a little bit since dapper needs to get
>> established first before backports will work.
> 
> Who, or what, is "dapper"?

The current testing release...
> 
>> The reason why gnucash isn't the latest is because ubuntu will freeze and
>> fix bugs in the packages instead of constantly updating them and risking
>> bringing in other bugs.
> 
> I'm a little surprised, though, that the latest Gnucash is that
> unstable. 

It probably isn't, but you still have to have someone go to the trouble of
packaging it.  Ubuntu, or Debian, or CentOS are _all_ going to have older
versions of GnuCash than the GnuCash website has.  The fact that Centos' is
newer merely means they packaged theirs more recently.  Perhaps you caught
it just after the packaging, and it won't be updated again for months...
It's always your option to skip the .debs and build any app from the
tarball.
-- 
derek