Using Backports to get the Latest Software

[buster]

First of all, I never knew until a year or two ago, that backports are really frontports - they aren't places to get software from the past, but from the future so to speak.  And with many distros you can add backport sources to your repositories, just by selecting them in your software apps, I guess like Synaptic.

Anyway, Jesse writes about this in today's DistroWatch.

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20200323

There is also an interesting review of Anarchy Linux, which you can use to install a regular Arch without too much hassle. Some of the comments at the end are good as well. You end up with a regular Arch, not a distro based on Arch. Manjaro is one of these not-pure-Arch distros which seem to get tangled up over time on my machines.

[fox]

Ironically Manjaro manages the rolling releases, during more testing before releasing. That should make it safer than pure Arch or Anarchy, but in my (somewhat limited) experience with Manjaro and Arch, I had one instance where Manjaro was borked by an update and I never had that happen with Arch. That might be a coincidence or the fact that the bork on Manjaro was a few years back and their system may have since improved. But I learned a lesson from that, which is not to depend on a rolling release distro (not that I did) unless it has a reliable mechanism for rolling back an update. So while I might try one of these Arch-based distros in the future, I wouldn't ever use one as a main distro.

To be fair, there are some other safeguards; e.g. I know that Arch is very good at covering upgraded packages reported later as problems, and what to do about it. But I don't want to have to be that active in keeping my computer running.