What you've described is the internal policy at the company I work for, and its a total nightmare. You don't get new versions of software until you upgrade your

What you've described is the internal policy at the company I work for, and its a total nightmare. You don't get new versions of software until you upgrade your entire OS, a non-zero amount of developer time is spent re-packaging things that have already been packaged (and their dependencies!) and if you want to run multiple versions concurrently, you have to resort to horrible hackery as aptitude doesn't support that. Sorry, no thanks.