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I wonder if anyone can help me? In Windows, when a new version of a program or 'app' is released, you can un-install that program and then install the updated program with complete ease. However, as I am using Ubuntu 11.04 this is not the case. My question is how can I install/upgrade programs in Ubuntu 11.04 to the latest version without migrating/upgrading to the latest Ubuntu version? The reason I won't upgrade to a newer Ubuntu release is that I don't like the Unity interface or GNOME 3 and that I cannot seem to place icons on the desktop i.e. Firefox, my home folder, my computer, etc. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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1 Answer

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While there is no easy way to do what you want (maybe just to add program-specific ppa's), Debian Systems (such as Ubuntu) have, to say simply, a network (I don't mean Internet, but I mean that all is connected between each another) of packages. That means that if you change one package, you will change all packages that depend on it, there lies the big problem with old and unsupported distros; a program depends on a newer library that is not compatible with your Ubuntu version.

I would suggest to upgrade to 12.04 or 12.10 and install the MATE Desktop Environment, which is a fork of GNOME 2, but can be installed in later versions of Ubuntu (such as 12.04 or 12.10).

As a side note:

To update your software, run this from a terminal, 

sudo apt-get update

and then:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If you are not familiar with command-line, you can always use Update Manager (search it in the Dash)

Explanation:

sudo - grants you root access.

apt-get update - updates the packages data (such as name, description and version).

apt-get dist-upgrade - updates your software to newer versions.

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