arch alternatives

[merlyn]

Reaper isn't in the official repos as such. It's in the AUR -- the Arch user repository. The official repos are always up to date, perhaps too much for some people. I regularly update my kernel, and in the four years I've been using Arch, updating my kernel has messed up my system twice. It's easily fixed by rolling the kernel back.

I install packages from the AUR manually, and have to keep them up to date myself. I try to keep them to a minimum. Usually an AUR package compiles from source. With Reaper the package is called reaper-bin and it is using the .tar archive from the Reaper website as is, the same archive that would be used to install Reaper manually.

https://archlinux.org/packages/?q=reaper
Then what's this? They've just updated it..
I know I was surprised about a year or so ago when I did a pacman -Syu and it came in.

I am as surprised by that as you and Gmaq. That's the first time I've seen closed source software in the official repos. It's also the first time I've seen software in the official repos flagged out of date. I don't think I'd be too bothered about getting every point release.