Ubuntu's multisearch surprise

Allow me to proselytize for GoboLinux again (www.gobolinux.org). It pretty much gives you exactly what you want in so far as ease of use and flexibility. All recipes are upstream versions and you can upgrade them however you want while still keeping around older versions. If you update to a new version of software and it sucks, you can easily go back to using the older version. In most cases, you can even use both versions at the same time.

It really is wonderful.