Hi

I have PClinuxOS as my host distro and Mint in a virtualbox.

I don't know which distros are bleeding edge types except for a few like arch, fedora and PClinuxos.

Also, if you are using a bleeding edge distro, how often do you encounter a package upgrade breaking some functionality of the other program(s)?

In PClinuxOS, from time to time, ffmpeg seems to break some functionality of a program that once worked in the past. Usually, this gets fixed after a few upgrades of the affected program.

Even though this is one of the pitfalls of using a bleeding edge distro, I still like using them.

If you know more distros that are bleeding edge types please reply.

Thanks

I have used Arch as my main system since February 2014 and it has only broken when I made it break.

That's not to say it won't fail -- Arch forum member report problems with upgraded packages all the time (NetworkManager 1.0 & KDE/Plasma 5 are prominent examples).

I have been using Debian sid for about six months and that has required one minor intervention (rebuilding the icon cache) in that time; however Debian jessie has been frozen since November so sid has only received a trickle of updates since then -- I expect things will get more "interesting" once jessie moves to Stable and a flood of new packages hits Testing/Unstable...

I changed my relatively new Slackware system to Current yesterday -- I'll let you know how that goes but the transition was completely painless.

I understand that Fedora Rawhide has the most bleeding edge (if you see what I mean); I tried that very briefly and it was a bit of a train wreck (in fairness it is not meant to be used as a "normal" system and I don't know my way around Fedora at all).
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Rawhide

I dabbled with slackware in the past which is a great and long lasting distro, but it's not for me. I need to have dependency resolution as most distros offer.

Arch, I did tried and I agree it doesn't break as much as in the earlier years.

I tried Fedora and it was up and down for me depending on the released version.

thanks Head_on_a_Stick for the reply

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <Linux - Distributions> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

I have been using the rolling update version of slackware, the current branch, since the release of 13.37. (The most recent stable release is 14.1)
My experience with slackware -current has been that its more stable and more easily maintained than every release distro i have used.
I have had to install a couple of dependencies for software not already included in slackware, so if you want something not included in most distros, you will likely have to install the dependencies as well.
If you decide to install slackware and install everything you will avoid dependency problems, since great care seems to be taken by PV and the others on the slackware team, on that point.
Just a word of caution though, if you are looking for the excitement derived from things breaking every now and then and the fun of fixing it, slackware, even the -current branch, may not be for you.

NADA beats Gentoo...

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=gentoo

And your comment is based on what? Please explain to the OP why you recommend Gentoo.

Funtoo set to Experimental is fairly bleeding edge. Just be warned that bleeding edge isn't always good, stable, safe, or sane to use.

Distrowatch did a series on rolling-release distros, starting here
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141013
Of course, rolling release is not the same as bleeding-edge; PCLinuxOS is definitely not intended to be bleeding-edge, being aimed at the average family computer. On the other hand, it's difficult to be really bleeding-edge without being rolling-release, although Fedora seems to manage it!

If you're looking for a bleeding-edge distro, the obvious choices would seem to be Arch, Debian Unstable, and OpenSUSE Factory. The Distrowatch experiment found that Arch was the most reliable of these; that's to be expected, as Debian and OpenSUSE are really intended to be used in the finished state.

In my limited experience (one-off testing rather than long-term use), Manjaro is a nice spin-off from Arch (having an installer is a good start...) and Semplice is a good replacement for Debian if you don't like Gnome. Beware Sabayon if you don't have infinite patience.