It is different. With the AUR, you manage those types of issues yourself and they are always in your control.
With chaotic-aur, someone else is managing them for you and there isn’t much you can do except wait for it to be fixed by chaotic-aur. Further, packages in chaotic-aur may have additional dependencies that sometimes will cause conflicts since they are built centrally.
Again, whether this is an issue or depends very much on which packages you have installed. But supporting people who use chaotic-aur always adds additional complexities.
The need to run an older LTS is for emergency purpose. For example if the current mainline Linux, which is 16.9.x as on date, causes some unforeseen problem then switch back to LTS Kernel 6.12.x or 6.6.x till the issue is resolved. The reason that I am not keen on using LTS 6.18.x kernel because of the various changes in the filesystems operations that have been introduced in it.
Additionally I have good experience with 6.12.x. I have had issues with 6.1.x, when I was not on EOS. Think of it as bias that one accumulates.
), but otherwise working