Distribution Packages

And why you should avoid them

A great explanation of the Debian / Ubuntu packaging mess can be found here: ​Matthew Garrett: There's more than one way to exploit the commons and also here: Debian Distribution-Specific Issues.

The problems with the Ubuntu packages are so severe that they have their own wiki page

Debian's hand waving about backports is rightfully ignored here.

Apart from the obvious danger of running versions without any security updates, there are other problems with downstream packages:

• often unusable builds, ie: fedora : invalid mode 'start'
• invalid and unnecessary package dependencies (ie: Fedora)
• enabling untested options or dangerous codecs (all distros)
• missing features (ie: HTML5 with Debian packages)
• gratuitous patching, causing breakage ie: Debian arm builds were unusable for years etc

See also: list of currently supported versions of xpra.

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For more details on just how dire the situation is, please see the original version of this page which used to keep track of severe issues in mode detail.