But you can force deb or rpm package installation (yum, rpm, urpmi, apt-get) on any Linux distribution.
Yes, you're right. Actually we do not need to force install, to install higher (or lower) version of the same app. But the problem is, it sometimes may refuse to let you to install Lazarus. At least it happened on my tests.
Here, the whole story.
I tested at least 3 times, the results were same. I cannot remember the full detail because those tests were performed long ago.
I used Gdebi instead of sudo dpkg. The installation of FPC and FPC-source were success, although the version I installed was higher than the version recommended in my Ubuntu repository.
But when I used Gdebi to install the Lazarus deb package,
the "install" button was greyed, I cannot click to continue. I checked using Synaptic Package Manager, both FPC and FPC-source were correctly installed.
After some random testings, I found simply version lock both the FPC and FPC-source, the disabled "install" button when installing Lazarus became available.
Maybe now, things have been changed. But no harm to test version lock.