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The problem with rolling release distros like Arch is that I don't actually care about running the latest version of all my software. For most of software on my system, I only care that it works. The few things I do want on the bleeding edge, I'll just build myself.

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Arch isn't bleeding edge, its latest stable. If the software you get isn't stable that's on the software authors you've chosen to rely on, not arch, not rolling releases.

I found more problems using e.g. debian stable. Upgrades were totally black box and anything could break spectacularly. This was most commonly caused by mixing up to date software you build yourself and the stable repos. Arch on the other hand updates happen daily, and for me, unattended. If I ever do find issues (rare to never), backups fix it.

> Arch isn't bleeding edge, its latest stable.

For any definition of stable.

That said, the ABS tree and the AUR in arch, combined with the general avoidance of patches, do make arch one of the easiest places to play with bleeding edge software. With the toolchain in place, so many packages are just a one line version number change to get any particular version building. Whereas building packages from source on ubuntu/fedora/etc can be an uphill battle depending how entrenched the distro's patches and inter version dependencies are. (Though most of the time, building things via make and sticking them in some directory is acceptable, arch really does make building packages easier than other distros)

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