Hot take: Windows handles this stuff so much better.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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Apt packages used to get more updates in the past. Especially ubuntu repos. Today everything just seems to rely on Debian. Which is always lacking behind.
I don't like it either. Especially for gaming you really want the latest improvements. Or for science workloads. Or other professionals.
The problem is that there's so many different ways of packaging and also that Windows generally does static linking so old binaries work after a decade. Whereas old Linux binaries are generally dynamically linked and are dependent on some other old library which isn't availible for [current kernel] and you get into dependency hell
so, it’s the same.
saying “Linux does dynamic linking and Window does static linking” is both false and a mischaracterization. Windows absolutely does dynamic linking with its Dynamically Linked Libraries (.dll). how dependencies are linked is up to the developer and whatever hardware constraints. one reason i like Rust is that it prefers static linking, and a lot of tool chains are moving in that direction. the reason Linux distros push people toward their internal package management tools (eg apt) is to have tighter control over dynamic linking.
and we’re also glossing over scoop and chocolatey and winget and Docker.
but that’s where you get to stuff like flatpack and snap and Nix that try to contain the dynamic dependencies.
i don’t think downloading exes hoping that Windows has stuffed enough DLLs into the OS and just running them is a better solution.
This is fine as long as upstream supports a convenient way to get the latest versions of software for which you actually need latest (APT repositories)
Stable base, only explicitly allow selected unstable/bleeding edge components.
This is what I do for ROCm and a few other things which need to be constantly updated (yt-dlp). Sometimes stable-backports repositories are enough, but not always.
Especially with the newer ROCm 7.2.x releases improving hardware support and other improvements. Especially with the rate of improvements to ROCm recently, it's unfortunate to see ROCm 7.1 shipped in the Ubuntu 26.04 archive.
Improvements!
But yeah, 3 months out of date for software that isn't security critical is fine. Probably just hit the feature freeze at a bad time. It still presumably works well enough for most people.
3 months isn't bad though. Especially since it's going to be locked out of changes so in 5 years it will be 5 years and 3 months out of date. The bigger problem with rocm is that they cut off older cards way too soon.
I bought a radeon pro vii brand new from a shop (granted it was a runout sale) and it was already cut off. It still works but not supported.
AMD can't keep complaining everyone focuses on CUDA when they don't even bother to support their own product. It supports very few cards and they get cut off way too soon.
Nvidia supports even midrange consumer cards and they keep supporting them a long time.
there’s a world of options. this is an LTS distro. use Arch or Nix or whatever if you want the latest packages. i actually switched to NixOS because the CUDA drivers were too new on Arch, and i wanted a better way to pin versions.
or i dunno keep publicly complaining about it until someone does the work for you
I mean, even in an LTS distro, it sure would be nice if the packages were reasonably up-to-date on the day the version was released.
i guess it would be nice, but packages being a few months out of date is pretty normal for Ubuntu, in my experience. i’m not sure what their testing process is like, but part of using something like Ubuntu is stability guarantees. if they felt like the couldn’t do that for newer versions for whatever reason (resource constraints, lack of downstream interest from stakeholders, etc) they’re not necessarily obligated to.
2 months. lts or not, ubuntu's freeze date is and has historically been about two months before release.
if the 2 year cycle between lts is too long for someone, they don't have to stay on that ride.
26.04 is brand new
it’s Ubuntu dawg. you get what you pay for.
…and you pay more for other distros?
just a silly turn of phrase meaning: you should know that this is what you signed up for
I didn't pay? Even if I did you got the same result, 🤣
It's brand new so they have no excuse for having such an old package version.
But It's Months Out-Of-Date
So, par for the course for Ubuntu, no?
Being old != bad. Some software is not critical in terms of cyber security. You have to assess the use case. Feels like you're screaming wolf, without knowing the package.
For rocm, old is bad.
Surprise! A Debian based distro uses antique packages! Who would have seen that coming? 🙀 /s
Same with Linux mint. I don't like it. I like Linux mint a lot. I only dislike the old packages.
This only holds true if you're talking about Debian Stable, there are definitely Sid or Testing based distros for which that doesn't hold true.
See PikaOS for example.
this is why we are moving to packaging like flatpak.
Yeah, would much rather a package designed for my distro than a flatpak.
I recall a time where the native package on my distro wasn’t working at all, I think this was when I was using discord and tried to use Vencord on Debian 12, so I tried the flatpak version and again it did not work. I was between a rock and a hard place, do I troubleshoot what is essentially a containerized/sandboxed application or try to figure out what’s going on my host machine.
I chose the latter and eventually got it working, but now I don’t use discord so waste of my time regardless.
if properly implemented, it shouldn't matter. much the same way android apks works in pretty much any android "distro", despite a few snags on the more aggressive manufacturer roms.
No, Flatpak limitations literally make it impossible to get all Discord features working. It’s not a problem with the config, it’s a design flaw of Flatpak itself.
then it's not properly implemented yet, on either side.
i'm curious as to which ones though, what can't you do?
Or this is why we are moving to a rolling-release model.
Or this is why I'm rolling over.
Will test it as soon as possible. Does someon know how compartible it is with a qemu VM ? I need some GPU abilities like Vulkan there.