What it mean to be cutting edge?

Question

Have been an Arch Fan for long long time. However, I didn't use Arch as long as have in love with it. the reason why is....
It is too cutting edge. And because of this fact. I think I am about to leaven Arch once again soon....
It is heart broken statement. but it seems very likely to happen. but why....?
It is because of GNOME 3.0. as far as it goes. GNOME SHELL is a super annoying interface. You know with that zoom in and out and in and out effect. and that poorly designed clock at the dead center, which you can't do anything about it. Not to mention that add/ delete Desktop feature. Wow you can add up to 1073 desktop. OK? what are you going to do with all this? little good option makes a huge deal. Most people wouldn't agree with me at this point. because it looks "impressive" but I think eventually they will agree with me. if they really care about work flow, and actually reasonable graphic design (by not mean about "cool" eye candy. but layout, and transition)
I know what the GNOME team is doing can't control by Arch, but by it very arch philosophy. they will eventually use GNOME 3.0 and kick out Gnome 2.30. Just like they did with KDE when KDE 4 come out. They drop KDE 3.5 way before KDE 4 is actually usable. So my question is is really Cutting the edge that important to Arch. perhaps what is really mean be to cutting edge? Is it just because the number is higher or is it the really edge cut break through of a software that actually count. In the case GNOME. GNOME 2.30 is totally a difference interface with GNOME 3.0. They are simply not the same thing. Well, they developed by the same team. But it doesn't seem GNOME3 is more advance then GNOME 2.x. In fact, In a way. GNOME 2.x is more advance than GNOME3.0. (you don't have to agree with me) So if some "release" is more or less is just like a Beta. Why so Arch actually use it as primary package? After all it is ok be to there, but why it has to kick out the old one?
Arch is so wise, to come out with it's great philosophy, but after that, people just following it blindly. I am totally no problem with Arch Linux, except be it being too cutting edge. And just all these latest package even when they are known have problems. Of course, it only happen once for a while, but sometime, it happen to that one thing people really love to have in their box.
In conclusion, the question is simple. Is the cutting edge philosophy it out important anything, like the general quality of the distro. Even so. as I mention above, than what is it actual meaning of cutting edge? Just some personal option about Arch Linux. and Just tell some problem I have encounter in Arch. I know I know, there are like million way to go around things. which is good thing about the Linux world, but that is not points. and I know some of the point I am making seems a bit too early. But problems happen once, and might happen again.
Thanks all the Develop and users' support on Arch Linux.

Answer 1

ioky wrote:"What it mean to be cutting edge?" Is it the "latest" and "stable" release is cutting edge. or the one who is most advanced as cutting edge? or it means something else. I mean things can be stable but not useful. and thing can be not stable, but the developer just call it finally release. Cutting Edge is great, we all love Cutting edge, But how Arch Linux actually define the Cutting Edge. and how Arch user think what Cutting Edge mean? It is great that it is follow a good set of philosophy, but I think sometime blindly following a good set of philosophy can also be very irrational.
It's not so much "blindly following a good set of philosophy" as it is pragmatic, it's usually a lot more work to maintain a legacy branch than following the current upstream "stable" release.  You can't just let the software packages sit there, eventually they will have to be rebuilt to be compatible with new system libraries that have to be updated for use in other programs, eventually the programs won't compile without patching the source; also non-core GNOME applications that you might want to use may only work with newer GNOME libraries unless you backport APIs / features into the old libraries.  And bugs will never be fixed unless the maintainers do it.  That's a lot of work.  I mean, a project with a lot of manpower like Ubuntu or Debian might try and do something like this, but there's not enough manpower amongst the arch devs and TUs, nor I suspect enough desire, to do this sort of thing.
So Arch keeps it simple and just ships the newest upstream "Stable Release" as long as there aren't any big obvious problems with the packages.  Side benefit: the developers don't have to decide which version of the software is "most advanced"; which is often entirely a matter of opinion.  (KDE 3.5.x still has some features lacking in the KDE 4.x.x series ... but there are a lot of new features in KDE 4.x.x that were never present in 3.5.x ... so which series is more "advanced"?  <- not so easy question to answer)
The really elegant thing about the Arch philosophy is that it emphasizes pragmatism, therefore following the philosophy is pragmatic.