I'm not sure why you wouldn't have access to the newest version on your
desktop. I didn't think Debian even had the older version available
anymore. Just to check, you did perform an update of the database? Also,
what version did you end up with?
Refreshing should work. You can also run "apt-get update" from a console
to make sure there isn't anything wrong with synaptic.
The quick version is to install python, pygame, and numpy. You *should*
already have python and pygame installed if you're able to run the old
version, but numpy is new. Install the python-numpy package from
synaptic, and singularity should work.
.30 is the newest version, and the one I see on my system.
Synaptic isn't a "one-size-fits-all" -- it's just a graphical front-end
for apt. And the repositories are basically what demarcates one
distribution from another. So... you'd have to do this on a
"per-distro" basis.