New distro time, please help me decide!

[cakofony]

I have been using ubuntu and gentoo for a while, but lately I have been annoyed with autoconfig in ubuntu, and its bloat. Also, gentoo hasnt been the most stable thing ever, and installing kde 4 is really hacky.

I tried out debian, but like ubuntu, it releases new packages every few months, and just minor updates in between.

What do you think is my best bet for bleeding edge packages and configuration, without bloat?

[rokytnji]

Mepis AntiX8 seems to fit. Updating it is very flexible.

Look for yourself.

[L4Linux]

Fedora is synonymous to bleeding edge. I'm not talking just about latest packages, the Fedora community is pushing innovation to unknown frontiers! Plymouth, Delta RPMs, PackageKit, RPM 4.6 to name a few, they are all developed by them and followed by every single distribution!!!

And since I'm Greek, I just love the new Parthenon-style wallpaper!

[reed9]

Arch Linux. Rolling release, and you build the system you want from a solid base, so no bloat. (Or if there is bloat, it's because you installed it.) The latest stable releases are quickly in the repos. (Heck, KDE 4.2 was in the repos before the official release announcement.) And if you're annoyed with autoconfig, Arch doesn't do that. Most system configuration happens in one file, called rc.conf. Daemons, modules, and most network configuration all happen there. Arch Compared To Other Distros - ArchWiki

The Arch Way - ArchWiki

[Jonathan183]

I second Arch ... look at kdemod - I'm using kdemod3 (not making the jump to kde4 at the moment). You can choose kde3 or kde4 (but not both on the same system).

[oz]

Welcome to the forums... you sound like you might be a prime candidate for Arch!

[cakofony]

Wow, I hadn't heard much about arch before, I'm downloading it now though ^.^
Arch sounds like exactly what I'm looking for! Stable package manager, new packages, and the configuration of gentoo!

[reed9]

Arch is best. I even bought a shirt that tells me so. And pacman is, IMHO, the best package manager out there.

[cakofony]

I dont quite understand aur, is there any way to use packages from there with pacman?
I tried using an aur frontend for my fglrx drivers... didnt work too well... I cant modprobe it. Also, I got x to start once (and it froze upon doing so) and now, it just says its creating some directories, and doesnt start.

[reed9]

The easiest way to use AUR is to download yaourt. Add this to /etc/pacman.conf

[archlinuxfr]
Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/i686

(Change i686 to x86_64 is you're using the 64 bit version.)

Then do

pacman -Sy yaourt

yaourt uses all the same options as pacman, but will search AUR if a package isn't located in core, extra, or community. Yaourt - ArchWiki

So you can now install the ATI drivers as so

su -
yaourt -S dkms-fglrx

EDIT: I should note yaourt will throw a warning if you use it as root. They suggest setting yourself up with sudo priveleges and using it that way.