How to change GDAL version

If I had to guess you are not using the most uptodate QGIS. please follow this link, to ubuntuGIS repository and they have instructions on how to include them in your software sources.

I believe this is the recommended method of using OSGeo projects in Ubuntu https://launchpad.net/~ubuntugis/+archive/ppa hope this helps :)

ps: you can also just cmdline:

sudo add-apt-repository http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntugis/ppa/ubuntu

PSS: this is similar question: How to install stable GDAL on Ubuntu 11.10?

EDIT: found another link: Installing gdal 1.9.0 on linux ubuntu server 10.04?