Best distro for bleeding edge software
 

Hey guys, I currently run opensuse on my laptop for work and it does a great job - I am using 10.2

I am looking for the best distro to use at home to run the blleding edge stuff Xgl kde 4 etc. I do like gui interfaces, but am not afraid of the CLI either. The reason I dont think opensuse is a good choice for this is because as soon as you start using unsupported repos, the dependencies go to shi* and parts of the nice setup you had before get all out of whack and its very hard to work out what broke it.

Im guessing the anser to this will be gentoo?
btw I like gentoo, its has very nice response with architecture compiled apps.
cheers
Jurgen

If you like Gentoo, then probably you should check www.sabayonlinux.org

Depending on exactly what kind of bleeding-edge you want you might want to try out Elive (http://www.elivecd.org/) or Foresight (http://www.foresightlinux.org/). Elive makes you donate to download their CD, though. Hope that helps.

Why don't you check out Slackware 12? It will give you very good control over your system and the kernel is fairly new. From there you make your own decisions :) Otherwise i'm driving Fedora 7 on my laptop, it's nice too and... awh Check out Slax too and ::)) hmmm :) There's just to many 'bleeding edge' out there now :)

Sidux.

Bleeding edge Debian Sid with many enhancements.

I recommend Knoppix 5.x Live CD which can install to Debian x. Knoppix does a great job with all sorts of inscrutable hardware not just video cards. Knoppix should be part of everyone's toolbox since it allows you to look at and try just about everything on your PC.
For what its worth:
www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

Any minimal distro (I would say debian) and then use svn and cvs and git to take the most current softwares.
Have fun ;)

I would say to avoid distros like debian and related. While you could install stuff by hand, it is annoying
(you have to install everything by hand, and upgrading sucks). Besides. If you're going to go that route, go with Linux From Scratch.

For bleeding edge, I would either recommend gentoo or Arch. Arch has advantages in that it is not compiled, so you get the speed of binary installation, plus the rolling package management of gentoo. Arch, however, only supports i686 and amd64.

Most other distros work on a "Release" cycle, which means that when KDE releases version 4, you have to either install manually (dangerous!, depending on system), or wait until the next release cycle.

So far, Arch and gentoo and derivatives are the only distros i've seen with rolling (that is, new packages are added to the tree as they are created) updates.

I can't vouch for or disagree with Slackware, but I can definitely vouch for Arch, it's fantastic.

Also, Sidux, Debian unstable or experimental, or any *buntu beta also support bleeding edge software. For the Debian or *buntu betas, expect breakage, which is why I vouched for Arch in the first place: It can do bleeding edge, but its base is very stable.

Sidux looks very interesting, but I have no experience with it.

Also, wrt Sabayon: This distro looks and performs amazing. I have read that there arise issues when attempting to update the system using emerge, as a lot of breakage ensues. Due to these readings, I didn't attempt to do this myself, because I like my system working. If you plan on staying bleeding edge with Sabayon, then you'll need to download the latest versions as they come out, instead of the rolling release that Gentoo is good for. Things may have changed since the version I have used though (3.4d)

Debian Sid/sidux is simple to keep updated, apt-get dist-upgrade keeps your system updated. How the hell is apt-get install package considered installing by hand? With a repo of over 20k packages you do not get any better than Debian Sid.