What does "up to date" even mean in this context? It's not like there is a new version of Kmail every day. Why do you care if your version is a bit older?
That said, the exception is a browser, where I would prefer to use the upstream version for security reasons.
> What does "up to date" even mean in this context? It's not like there is a new version of Kmail every day. Why do you care if your version is a bit older?
Honestly, anything that a developer has pushed. Sometimes I want an SVN build of DOSBox or need a bleeding edge feature of some tool I use all the time. On Windows, this is simply a matter of downloading a binary, but by and large Linux software doesn't work that way. Distros expect that you will use whatever version of a package they have seen fit to grace you with, or you compile from source like it is 1975.
It is not unreasonable or unrealistic to ask for a stable platform upon which one can run bleeding edge applications, yet this remains painful on Linux Desktop.
For this we now have the AppImage format! (or snap/flatpack depending on your preference)
For the few cases were you need bleeding edge you can just download and run it just like on Windows. For most applications bleeding edge is really not necessary and you can just normally install via package manager.
If only that were true, but there isn't an AppImage (my preference, but same applies to flat and sanp too) for every program. Or even most programs in my experience.
Yeah, honestly I don't understand understand why it is not more popular. Probably still needs a bit of time to really catch on.
Though I don't think the situation is that bleak. Any popular application where user have a reasonable interest in having the latest version should have some way to ship it on Linux?
Thinking about what I personally use, blender just has a tarball, no trouble, VS Codium, Godot, Unity, Love2d all have AppImages, the IntelliJ IDEs can be installed via snap. Browsers are handled by package manager. Most of my dev stuff is running on docker anyway.
Yes, it is a bit of a mess with all the different ways to ship binaries but I can't think of something I am painfully missing. I don't care about having the newest version for most apps though so maybe I am more easily pleased.
That said, the exception is a browser, where I would prefer to use the upstream version for security reasons.