Packages ! get the current ones???

[farruinn]

Richard Wrote: 
> After downloading and researching many packages, for install,
> I have come to realize that all the packages  for the most part,
> the one NOT in the Ubuntu realm are not current.
> 
> xmcd (2.6-17) Is one that comes to mind,
> so, how does one get the current version (3.3.2) (which is not listed)
> and have the simple install (aka: synaptic installer)?
> 
> please I'm not a command line guru.

Given that last comment, there is no simple answer. There are backports
repositories which allow you to install stuff from the development
release on the current stable release without too many problems. In
this case, xmcd is at 2.6-17 in all releases. The question becomes, how
badly do you need that latest version? If you absolutely require it,
perhaps you can download an rpm and using alien convert it to a debian
package:

$ alien xmcd.rpm
$ sudo dpkg -i xmcd.deb

You could also build it from source and create a debian package from
that. There is a lot of documentation for this at
http://www.debian.org/doc, but that is by no means easy.

The fact of life is packages in Ubuntu will go out of date because
Ubuntu relies on its six-month release cycle. It may not be convenient
to wait 6 months for an upgrade, but at least there is some guarantee
that your system will be stable for those 6 months.

Hoping that helped somewhat?


-- 
farruinn