  The open-source Linux operating system is available through a wide variety of
distributions, each containing a collection of installable software packages.
It can be important to keep these packages as fresh as possible to benefit from
new features, bug fixes and security patches. However, not all distributions
place the same emphasis on package freshness. We conducted a survey in the
first half of 2020 with 170 Linux users to gauge their perception of package
freshness in the distributions they use, the value they place on package
freshness and the reasons why they do so, and the methods they use to update
packages. The results of this survey reveal that, for the aforementioned
reasons, keeping packages up to date is an important concern to Linux users and
that they install and update packages through their distribution's official
repositories whenever possible, but often resort to third-party repositories
and package managers for proprietary software and programming language
libraries. Some distributions are perceived to be much quicker in deploying
package updates than others. These results are valuable to assess the
requirements and expectations of Linux users in terms of package freshness.
