Versions Confusion

Hi! I’ve been running Netrunner about 1 year, very pleased. Many thanks!

I noticed today 17.06 installer, I’ve been on 17.01. I decided to enable backports repos, the updates are running now.

So this is what I THINK I understand, and I’m hoping for confirmation or correction: 17.06 is basically a stable milestone. In theory backports will “pass through” the software versions included in 17.06 – and keep updating as backports are made available.

I guess separately, Netrunner Rolling refers to the Arch-based core. Backports “is” the debian rolling-ish path.

OK, supposing I’m not completely lost. Is there also a choice between Netrunner backports and debian? Like, can one use Netrunner as the install base and then switch to debian stable repos?

You are correct. Backports keeps you up to date with newest Plasma, KF5 and KDE Applications.
You can enable Debian stable repos on Netrunner but future updates via backports require Debian testing packages.