Ubuntu Hardy ships with Pidgin v2.4.1 and Firefox 3.0 Beta5, while the latest Pidgin is v2.4.2 and the latest Firefox is 3.0 RC1. Here are two repositories that would always contain the latest versions of Pidgin and Firefox. Just type “gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list” into the terminal, and add the following to the end of the file.
For Pidgin:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ubuntu hardy main
For Firefox:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/ubuntu hardy main
After adding the lines, just type “sudo apt-get update” and then “sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” in the terminal (apt will give a warning about unauthenticated packages, but its safe to ignore the warning and type “y”). After doing this, you should have the latest versions of both Pidgin and Firefox 
23/05/2008 at 1:56 pm Permalink
Thanks a lot…. This was much needed.
23/05/2008 at 1:57 pm Permalink
I knew this would help many people
You are welcome Manas 
12/06/2008 at 11:51 pm Permalink
thks man..
25/06/2008 at 5:04 am Permalink
Brillian! Thanks so much!
02/07/2008 at 11:51 pm Permalink
Great idea! Are you updating regularly? 2.4.3 is out (already installed it manually, but I prefer reps obviously).
02/07/2008 at 11:53 pm Permalink
Hey!
Just to let you know, im not maintaining these repos.. They are maintained my the pidgin development team
03/07/2008 at 9:45 pm Permalink
Do you know what key should I add so apt can authenticate the packages?
03/07/2008 at 9:49 pm Permalink
Hay Jj!
Im afaraid launchpad ppa packages are unauthenticated. There is no key that can make those errors go away
But all packages are safe, you can be sure of that 
22/07/2008 at 10:08 pm Permalink
Thanks a lot!
13/08/2008 at 6:23 pm Permalink
this works great. thank you!
02/09/2008 at 8:04 am Permalink
pidgin 2.5.1 …? is this repo still being updated or what?
02/09/2008 at 8:14 am Permalink
It usually takes a few days before a new version comes into the repo, so please be patient
16/09/2008 at 11:33 pm Permalink
im still not getting it…
20/10/2008 at 12:17 am Permalink
Thanks man, it worked perfectly! Although at first I thought it didn’t work. But I always confuse ‘update’ and ‘upgrade’ so I made a typo. So everybody who has the problem that it doesn’t work, try copy-pasting the things up here in the terminal first.
20/10/2008 at 12:31 am Permalink
Good to know this still helps people! I myself have moved on to a better distro (arch)
14/11/2008 at 4:24 pm Permalink
To disable the unauthenticated warning
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade -y –allow-unauthenticated
while “upgrade” only upgrades, “dselect-upgrade” installs new packages if required
-y answers “yes” to simple questions like “xxx Mb of disk space will be needed…”
–allow-unauthenticated can be used only with the option “-y” and disables the unauthenticated warning. You could use “–force-yes”, but that would be far more dangerous ‘cos it answers “yes” to EVERY question