Others have already mentioned how one can go about tracking more recent versions of packages.
I will add that many people (well, at least one person: me) would much rather have a system which is "known good" than one with the latest versions. I personally have no need for XF4, so I'll wait until I'm reasonable certain that everything I've got now will continue to work with it. For me, this means I wait until 'stable' to upgrade. Which is not at all to say that people shouldn't be able to get more recent versions of packages. Debian wouldn't be nearly as successful as it is if you couldn't decide to live on the bleeding edge. But the general philosophy, as far as I can make it out, is conservative, and means that on a stable system you will usually be a few versions behind on most packages. -- joe
