>User software can have bugs in newer releases, but they're usually minor - you'll still be able to get work done without much disruption. And that's not really

>User software can have bugs in newer releases, but they're usually minor - you'll still be able to get work done without much disruption. And that's not really an Arch issue. Unless the bug is reported & fixed very quickly, Ubuntu/Fedora are likely to also get the buggy versions, just later. And this is the thing people ignore when they say they have no issues with cutting edge (not necessarily rolling release, which can be stable) distributions. Note that I'm not egging on you, if you're happy with the way your system works and manages software updates there's nothing wrong with that. The software that makes up the distribution is as critical as the distribution itself. When you use cutting edge software you roll along with the issues new software introduces as soon as they're introduced. This has a plethora of effects including temporary breakage, feature removal that gets later reconsidered, config files that no longer work (or do different things) from one day to the next, and similar things. While stable distributions do eventually inherit the software anyway, they generally do so at a later patch release. They'll go from 2.3.6 to 2.3.7 while waiting for the newest 2.4.0 release to get itself together. When necessary, downstream patches are used to apply fixes from newer releases without directly upgrading to a whole new version. This makes for a much slower rate of change in general, and as such a much slower rate of breakage. One can work around a specific set of bugs, but when that set of bugs changes every other day, that's harder and more time consuming to deal with. Personally I prefer this latter approach, mostly as it allows me to choose when things may break (i.e. when upgrading between releases). Gentoo is currently the distro that provides me this choice, allowing me to pick between stable and bleeding edge releases on a per-package basis, hold back updates without causing library linking issues, and allowing me to install packages without syncing the entire repository and upgrading everything. This allows me to set some time apart to upgrade my system and be able to deal with whatever broke this time. My system's most recent breakage came in the form of adwaita-icon-theme removing all the remaining non-symbolic icons, causing some programs to now lack their icons.