Which Linux distro(s) are good for bleeding-edge software in their package managers?

I'm looking for a Linux distribution that will allow me to obtain bleeding-edge software through the package manager. I've looked at OpenSUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu so far, and it looks like OpenSUSE and Fedora are the best options, but I'm wondering if I'm overlooking something.

I don't think it matters, but beyond having bleeding-edge software in the package managers, I'm going to be using the distro for software development (C, C++, Java, Scala, Clojure, Haskell, Erlang, .NET using Mono) and file storage.

Thomas Owens

Posted 2010-02-27T20:06:56.287

Reputation: 3 663

Answers

Arch and Gentoo are probably the most bleeding edge of the distros.

Justin Smith

Posted 2010-02-27T20:06:56.287

Reputation: 3 746

1Foresight Linux is also bleeding-edge – Mahmoud Hossam – 2010-02-27T22:18:44.897

The development track of Fedora called Rawhide is probably quite up to date with most stuff. Fedora (and previously Redhat Linux) has a long tradition of being bleeding edge (for instance Redhat was one of the first distributions to start using libc version 5 in the a.out to ELF transition back in the days for instance). I do not know too much about other distributions to say if there are any even more bleeding edge, but Rawhide will not be a bad choice.

For a comparison between different distributions you can look here although it is dated (Fedora equals Fedora Core 5). You can also see how Arch compares itself to others.

hlovdal

Posted 2010-02-27T20:06:56.287

Reputation: 2 760

1Every actively developed distro has its bleeding edge component (for example debian unstable is probably on par with both rawhide and arch), the difference is that arch tries to make the bleeding edge the normal system for end users, which at least theoretically means things will not stay catastrophically broken for as long. – Justin Smith – 2010-02-27T21:10:23.297

Justin's right, but I don't think things are "catastrophically broken" more often in other distributions. Arch is also a bit of a pain to configure, too. Regardless, even "bleeding-edge" components of distributions often fall behind. As an example, (I think) Ruby 1.9 isn't available in Fedora yet. – Yktula – 2010-04-18T00:06:16.780

Yup, I would like to agree with Justin. I would recommend Gentoo for the absolute bleeding edge thing.

Arch is wonderful...is an Gentoo without the compilation time. :)

Fedora is an Ok distro for me.I don't think Fedora is as bleeding agae as Gentoo and Arch is.

Thomas an unix like system is made by the developer for the developers.. right? So whatever the open system distro you use doesn't really makes a big deal to hinder any development.

You can even use Slackware too for that purpose.Personally I believe that an source based distro give much more insight into the OS.

Thanks

Bhaskar

unixbhaskar

Posted 2010-02-27T20:06:56.287

Reputation: 139