For some reason or another, the version of Nginx available in the standard Ubuntu repositories is old. Fortunately, there’s an alternate repository maintained. The Nginx install page shows us how to add it:
sudo su -
nginx=stable # use nginx=development for latest development version
add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/$nginx
apt-get update
apt-get install nginx
If you get an error like:
-bash: add-apt-repository: command not found
you need to:
aptitude install python-software-properties
Compiling from source is a pain. Do this instead (tested on Ubuntu 10.10).