I am trying to get the QGIS program working on Zorin. In the Software app, QGIS does come up in the search on the "Explore" tab. This will download and install. But this is an older version of QGIS. Is there any way to change which version of an application that Software downloads and installs?
The version installed is the newest in Zorin's/Ubuntu's repositories. In some cases, older versions are kept because newer versions added requirements that Zorin doesn't meet. (Zorin is based on Ubuntu 22.04, so anything needing 24.04 may not work on Zorin.)
In other cases, a package is genuinely and problematically out of date. (Calibre is one such case.)
The best course of action is probably to look for the application's website or Github, and see if they have a packaged version available for download there, and if so, whether or not it will work with Ubuntu 22.04. If they offer a Flatpak or AppImage version, that can work around such limitations, though Flatpak and other containerized formats have their own caveats that are discussed at length every few weeks here on the forum... 
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Their site says Ubuntu 22.04 supports only up to 3.40.There are 3 versions in the Software app, 2 are old and 1 is too new (2 weeks).
Something called cmake is the bottleneck.
And welcome to the forum!
The QGIS website has instructions on how to download a more up to date version for Debian/Ubuntu. However, it's also stated that the latest compatible version for Ubuntu 22.04 (that's what Zorin OS 17 is based on) is QGIS 3.40.
Note that this is strictly speaking about the native Debian package format, and not the Flatpak version, which is also available through the Software Store. I see there are actually two versions there, one of which is at 3.44.
Is 3.40 is fine for you, you can follow the instructions from the link above. I'll summarize them here just to avoid any confusion with version codenames and whatnot:
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First install some tools you will need for these instructions:
sudo apt install gnupg software-properties-common -
Now install the QGIS Signing Key, so QGIS software from the QGIS repo will be trusted and installed:
sudo mkdir -m755 -p /etc/apt/keyrings sudo wget -O /etc/apt/keyrings/qgis-archive-keyring.gpg https://download.qgis.org/downloads/qgis-archive-keyring.gpg -
Create a new "sources" file that will contain repository information to install the latest QGIS from. Then, you'll need to update this file with the appropriate repository for the current version of Zorin OS. You can do all this in one go with the following command:
cat << EOF | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qgis.sources Types: deb deb-src URIs: https://qgis.org/ubuntu-ltr Suites: jammy Architectures: amd64 Components: main Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/qgis-archive-keyring.gpg EOF -
Update the repository cache, and install it:
sudo apt update sudo apt install qgis qgis-plugin-grass
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If this format on Ubuntu will work?
Yes, this is the "new" format that is meant to replace the old one. The difference is the previous format was harder to read for humans, and also to parse with scripts, and this is much cleaner.
For reference:
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Yes, I know it from Debian. I find it quite nice - and You be able to even include the signing Key. But work that new Format on Ubuntu, too? Especially because Zorin runs on the Ubuntu 22 Base.
It will, yes. These files are read by APT, which supports this format since version 1.1, whereas Ubuntu 22.04 uses APT version 2.4.14. That's why I quoted the "new" format, because while it only recently started to gain adoption, it's been around for a while.
There's also this page that explains it in much more detail:
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Ah, good to know.
Thanks for all the information.
I found out what was going on. In the Software app, when QGIS is found by searching for it in the Explore tab, below the Install button there is a drop down list. You can pick from two entries from flatpak or Zorin OS. It turns out that one flatpak entry downloads the most current release, and the other flatpak entry downloads the last stable release.
It would be helpful if the version number of the application was shown on the dropdown list. How is the best way to put in an enhancement request to Zorin developers to add narrative as to which drop down selection is pointing which version.
Create a thread in category "feedback".
The version of a package is shown when you select the package and then in gnome software center scroll down to version. First you see a picture of the app, then a description, then the downloaded size/permissions/..., and below this the version.
To add a Picture to @Forpli's Describtion:
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