It's not a substitute to distribution-maintained packages. With no security support, you'll have to track and upgrade to the latest version. In contrast with other software, you'll have to upgrade your ES cluster (and potentially apply specific upgrade steps) several times a year.
I wasn't asserting anything here, just pointing out that there has been an alternative for almost 2 years.
It looks like ES separates repos by version[0], if that helps at all.