Bug 477249

You did not explicitly say which version of Spectacle you are using, but since you say you are using Debian Stable, I can see that the latest version Debian Stable has is 22.12.3. Unfortunately this version is no longer supported and a lot of changes have happened between then and the upcoming release (24.02). Please upgrade to a newer version.

That is useful information. But, I installed it from the Software Center.
Are you telling me that doing it that way does not always install the latest version?

sudo apt install spectacle says:
package not found.

What am I missing?

thx

(In reply to Dan from comment #2)
> That is useful information. But, I installed it from the Software Center.
> Are you telling me that doing it that way does not always install the latest
> version?
> 
> sudo apt install spectacle says:
> package not found.
> 
> What am I missing?
> 
> thx

In short, certain kinds of Linux distributions such as Debian Stable and Ubuntu have long upgrade cycles where very few changes happen in between distribution versions. This leads to their users being stuck with outdated versions. The solutions available to you are the following:

- Try to use a Flatpak, Snap, AppImage or other distribution independent package that provides a newer version of the software you want to use.
- Add a repository that provides a newer Debian package for the software you want to use. You might not have this option with Debian since extra repositories aren't as common for Debian as they are for other stable Linux distributions, AFAIK.
- Install a newer version by building it from source code. I don't expect most users to do this, let alone stable Linux distribution users. For users with the latest software versions from a distro like Arch Linux it's not so hard, but stable linux distribution users would probably need to set up a whole KDE development environment because their developer package versions are too old.
- Install a Linux distribution that provides newer packages. You can consider this a last resort, but it might solve a lot of problems if you eventually find yourself needing a lot of newer software versions.

You can ignore the following if the info above was all you needed to read:

Linux distributions that don't change much between versions are called "stable" Linux distributions. That is helpful for system administrators who need to manage hundreds or thousands of computers. It's a common misconception among Linux users who install Linux on their personal computers to think that "stable" means fewer bugs when stable distributions are usually just as buggy as any other kind. The difference is that the bugs you have to deal with remain the same for a long time. If you have a support contract with a company like Canonical, SUSE or RedHat, you may get patches specific to their supported Linux distributions to fix some of the bugs.

I couldn'tfind an appimage, snap or a flatpak. i coud probably figure out the last 2 but prefer appimage rather than loading a massive subsystem just to install one app

On Sun, Nov 19, 2023, at 4:31 PM, Noah Davis wrote:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=477249
>
> --- Comment #3 from Noah Davis <noahadvs@gmail.com> ---
> (In reply to Dan from comment #2)
>> That is useful information. But, I installed it from the Software Center.
>> Are you telling me that doing it that way does not always install the latest
>> version?
>> 
>> sudo apt install spectacle says:
>> package not found.
>> 
>> What am I missing?
>> 
>> thx
>
> In short, certain kinds of Linux distributions such as Debian Stable and Ubuntu
> have long upgrade cycles where very few changes happen in between distribution
> versions. This leads to their users being stuck with outdated versions. The
> solutions available to you are the following:
>
> - Try to use a Flatpak, Snap, AppImage or other distribution independent
> package that provides a newer version of the software you want to use.
> - Add a repository that provides a newer Debian package for the software you
> want to use. You might not have this option with Debian since extra
> repositories aren't as common for Debian as they are for other stable Linux
> distributions, AFAIK.
> - Install a newer version by building it from source code. I don't expect most
> users to do this, let alone stable Linux distribution users. For users with the
> latest software versions from a distro like Arch Linux it's not so hard, but
> stable linux distribution users would probably need to set up a whole KDE
> development environment because their developer package versions are too old.
> - Install a Linux distribution that provides newer packages. You can consider
> this a last resort, but it might solve a lot of problems if you eventually find
> yourself needing a lot of newer software versions.
>
> You can ignore the following if the info above was all you needed to read:
>
> Linux distributions that don't change much between versions are called "stable"
> Linux distributions. That is helpful for system administrators who need to
> manage hundreds or thousands of computers. It's a common misconception among
> Linux users who install Linux on their personal computers to think that
> "stable" means fewer bugs when stable distributions are usually just as buggy
> as any other kind. The difference is that the bugs you have to deal with remain
> the same for a long time. If you have a support contract with a company like
> Canonical, SUSE or RedHat, you may get patches specific to their supported
> Linux distributions to fix some of the bugs.
>
> -- 
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You reported the bug.