Thanks for the thread; but as best I can tell, that discussion addresses a compilation problem. On the other hand I think what they are saying is that even with an updated dpkg,there will be a failure at the library level? That is, Laz > 3.4 cannot be made to work on older OSs. Except Dev. 4.0 is still a stable version. (oldstable but stable).
If the only way to use newer Laz releases is a whole new OS install, I think we got a problem.
JohnSG