You should backup your seed if you haven't done so already, uninstall electrum using apt-get or whatever and then install python-setuptools, pyqt4 and python-pip. then download and install the latest electrum as per the installation instructions on electrum.org/#download . Unlike most software on linux electrum has to be installed manually from source tarball because it updates very often and distro vendors don't keep up with the latest.
apt-get purge electrum
apt-get autoremove
apt-get autoclean
Distro vendors really don't need to keep up with the latest electrum version but the should offer a working version and security updates.
Better write an email an ask for a new version!
