Why does apt-get have old versions of stuff

[Pants]

Hi,

Just trying out Linux (elementary OS).

On installing some common development programs (node, docker, etc) i've noticed the software is comically out of date.

Why aren't the repository stores updated more frequently? IS it tied to the OS version, meaning it's basically never going to be up to date?

Cheers

/Linux noob

 

[memyselfandi]

It will depend entirely on the policy of the particular Linux flavour in question. It may well be that the versions available in a particular repository for a particular OS release may be limited.

(You think that's complicated, try enterprise linux OSes where the vendor may backport patches themselves so that you may have fixes which don't appear until a different version upstream).

 

[wengole]

It's all controlled by the distro, which makes choosing a distro fun! Typically, they'll keep older versions as they know it works and would rather have it working than the latest version but risks of things not working.

Most distros offer testing or unstable or some other named repo that offers newer versions of software. This is designed so that people can test the latest version and identify and perhaps fix issues before it's released to the general population.

If you want the very latest you can run a rolling distro like Arch Linux or build/install from source.