Re: [Evolution] Question about updating

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend schinstad gmail com>]

On 12 June 2010 08:16, Jeffrey Needle <jeff needle gmail com> wrote:
> Hello.  I'm using Evolution 2.28.3 in a Ubuntu Linux environment.  I see
> from the Evolution web page that there is a version 2.3 available. Why
> doesn't the Ubuntu update manager automatically know this and update my
> Evolution version?
>
> I'm new to Linux, so this may be a dumb question.

Because when Ubuntu releases, they're stable. That means the
applications won't be upgraded, only patched for security. Well,
that's the general idea, anyway. There are some exceptions, such as
when security cannot be maintained without upgrading the software. You
can read more about it here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates

Software in Ubuntu is also a much bigger part of the system than they
are in that other operating system you might be familiar with, both
from a human and a technical point of view.  Software packages depend
on one another. This has great advantages, but it also makes it more
difficult to upgrade a single application. Evolution is part of the
GNOME desktop environment and depends on many components which
themselves depend on components. So upgrading only Evolution is quite
a load of work, even though there might be packages ready.

In normal cases, though, Evolution 2.30 would have been in Ubuntu
10.04. However, this was a special release to Ubuntu, and they wanted
to use a bit more mature software to make it stable from release.
GNOME (and therefore also Evolution) is released every six months.
Ubuntu is also released every six months, and is based on GNOME. That
means Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (10.10 -- for October 2010) will use
2.32 since releases of GNOME are also even numbered, while development
versions are odd.

Hope it helps you, and that you have fun using Ubuntu and Evolution.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad