First of all, it cannot be said that there is a problem with 5.4. 5.4 is still supported, and bugs are constantly being fixed. 5.5 is a different branch with some new features and the same regular bug fixes as 5.4.
The PHP version you get is compiled for your operating system and placed in the repo. If no one updates this repo, the latest version will not be downloaded. Many times when a system is released, these files are no longer updated after a while and stay at the old version. At this time you can get the source code yourself and compile and run it.
First of all, it cannot be said that there is a problem with 5.4. 5.4 is still supported, and bugs are constantly being fixed. 5.5 is a different branch with some new features and the same regular bug fixes as 5.4.
The PHP version you get is compiled for your operating system and placed in the repo. If no one updates this repo, the latest version will not be downloaded. Many times when a system is released, these files are no longer updated after a while and stay at the old version. At this time you can get the source code yourself and compile and run it.
The latest version in your system software source is 5.4. If you use the command to install it, you will install 5.4