But ... the PDF import function for LibreOffice Draw in Debian Squeeze, if you're using the libreoffice-pdfimport package from Debian Backports, is broken. Doesn't work. LO wants to open PDFs as text files in LO Writer, not as editable PDFs in LO Draw.

Debian Stable has a bad reputation of being little obsolete. It's never able to catch up with time. But I don't buy to the view that Debian Stable is outdated.

I'm greedy when it comes to software: I like having code that works, but I also want the very latest stable versions of my applications.  Ubuntu does a good job satisfying the former demand, but it lags behind other distributions when it comes to keeping its repositories up-to-date.  Fortunately, this issue has caught the attention of Ubuntu developers as of late, who have been discussing change

"Installing Emacs 22 on Debian Etch doesn’t need to be a painful experience. While installing from source is perfectly doable, some people will want to use the Debian packaging system. Emacs 22 is now in Sid but it didn’t make it yet to Etch backports..."

"In the past few months in the Debian-EeePC team, a number of interesting things have been happening. [...] Thanks to the efforts of numerous users and developers who are being added to our ranks daily, we expect by the time Lenny releases we will be well on our way to providing a pure Debian solution for the Eee. Whether or not everything needed for the Eee is in Lenny at that time remains to be seen. We need to allow for how long it takes to get new drivers into the kernel. But if we miss the release, we will certainly provide backports and look forward to full support in the following release."

The first beta of Amarok 2.2, codenamed 'Crystal Clear', was released on September 4 and packages are available for Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty from the Kubuntu Beta Backports. To install Amarok 2.2 Beta 1 in Kubuntu/Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope just follow the instructions...

Debian Lenny comes by default with OpenOffice 2.6.4, but in the meantime OpenOffice 3.1 was released. You can easily install it on your Debian box by using the Debian Lenny backports repository, which is a repository including newer versions of applications than the ones which come by default with Lenny. Just follow the steps...

The latest KDE 4 update 4.1.3 has moved to the backports section of Kubuntu 8.10.

Flashplugin-nonfree has been removed (see below), as this is closed source and we don't get security support for it. For security reasons, we recommend to immediately remove any version of flashplugin-nonfree and any remaining files of the Adobe Flash Player. Tested updates will be made available via backports.org.