Installing current Inkscape on Debian or Linux Mint Debian Edition

As of 2016, stable Debian repositories still have a very old version of Inkscape (0.48.5-3 in the default repos). The testing and unstable branches of Debian have the current recommended release, however, so it's quite simple to get it on your Debian:

1. Find out what version of Debian you have: In terminal, type less /etc/debian_version and look up the number there at https://www.debian.org/releases/
2. Add the appropriate backports release through your sources manager or directly to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/additional-repositories.list/etc/apt/sources.list, for Jessie (8) add the line deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main
3. Refresh the repository cache, as with apt-get update
4. apt-get -t jessie-backports install inkscape

Enjoy Inkscape!