I am not sure how I can tell what version is  being offered via the PPA.....
I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, via the PPA. I got a 'corrupted database' error when starting up yesterday, which I thought was strange. I keep backups, and I restored the previous day's data but still got a problem running bitcoin qt. I then restored  the data from a week ago, still problems. I ended up accepting a re index, and it seems ok  now in the morning. I was getting curious as to why the backup  data still apparently gave problems, but if a bug was the cause, then that explains it. I guess (??) tat the PPA has given me an update by now? The debug window states that the version is
satoshi v 0.8.4.0-g839c7d1-beta