I understand the logic in that from a technical aspect in the workflow of saving layout changes (and being able to cancel those if required), but from an end-user experience point it is not that great. So...
Edit a layout, then edit a custom block and change its text. Save the block (it feels funny by the way that the button says "Save configuration", but lets leave that for another issue*). At this point, a new user would expect that refreshing the page that shows the changes they've just made in the backend would reflect those changes in the front end. That doesn't happen though. They need to return to the layout edit page (thinking that Backdrop "doesn't work") and then they see the "This form has unsaved changes." message that asks them to save the layout (#1656).
As I said, not optimal UX there.
Recent comments
Hi ian, so, in your case all the other admin pages work fine, including the status page, only admin/reports/updates fails? But you can access admin/reports? Weird... I...
Update Report thows "Access denied You are not authorized to access this page."
The File (Field) Paths module should be able to move existing files. I've not tested it, but the module description says: Retroactive updates - rename and/or move...
Moving from /files into subdirectories
Yes indeed. We are exploring a few other more costly options, but as we are a low-resource start-up, we could save a lot of money by integrating Backdrop, CiviCRM and Ubercart for our membership...
UberPOS for Backdrop?