Anything Like Arch but With Less Reliance on AUR?

[Rukiri]

My answer would be gentoo, you compile from source and ebuilds are easy to work with.
Still a waiting game to install though but very easy, completely ignore genkernel it's worthless and with a lot of problems.. kernel 3.9.0-rc4 is very stable for an rc release. <-- it's what I use.

It's also very stable once you get it up and running, but if you want something like arch I'd probably go with either Debian Sid(or siduction) or Gentoo(funtoo is also available, but it doesn't have the latest packages in it's portage tree like gnome 3.8 for example...)

I'll be nice, here's my make.conf, edit for your needs.

# --[Compiler Flags]-- #
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=corei7 -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j9 -l8"


# --[Portage Settings] -- #
PORTAGE_NICENESS="10"
PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save"
PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="warn error info log qa"
PORTDIR=/usr/portage


# --[Layman Settings] -- #
#source /var/lib/layman/make.conf
#PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage


# --[System Settings]-- #
LINGUAS="en_US"
ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel"
INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse joystick synaptics"
VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia vesa"




# --[Use Flags]-- #
USE="bindist mmx sse sse2 sse3 bash-completion branding cleartype corefonts
truetype unicode dbus fontconfig gnome gtk gtk+ opengl qt4 qt3support X
cdpau webkit cups python ruby ffmpeg alsa ogg flack mp3 mp4 nvidia cuda
quicktime jpeg jpeg2000 midi png wav raw scanner libnotify ncurses
mudflap musepack musicbrainz networkmanager wicd nptl pam pango rss sasl sdl
sqlite startup-notification svg tiff usb vorbis wavpack wifi x264 xorg
xscreensaver xv xvid zlib zip unzip unrar theora declaritive sql script"


# --[Gentoo Mirrors]-- #
SYNC="rsync://rsync.us.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ rsync://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo ftp://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo http://gentoo.mirrors.easynews.com/linux/gentoo/ http://chi-10g-1-mirror.fastsoft.net...too-distfiles/ ftp://chi-10g-1-mirror.fastsoft.net/...too-distfiles/ http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo rsync://rsync.gtlib.gatech.edu/gentoo ftp://ftp.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.mirrors.hoobly.com/ ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/gentoo http://lug.mtu.edu/gentoo/ ftp://lug.mtu.edu/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.netnitco.net/pub/mirrors/gentoo/source/ http://gentoo.netnitco.net http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ rsync://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ rsync://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ rsync://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ rsync://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ rsync://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/
http://mirrors.rit.edu/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.iawnet.sandia.gov/pub/gentoo/ http://mirror.iawnet.sandia.gov/gentoo/
ftp://gentoo.llarian.net/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.llarian.net/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo
http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo http://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/
ftp://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://mirror.lug.udel.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://gentoo.cites.uiuc.edu/pub/gentoo/
ftp://gentoo.cites.uiuc.edu/pub/gentoo/ rsync://gentoo.cs.uni.edu/gentoo-distfiles http://gentoo.cs.uni.edu/
http://mirror.usu.edu/mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.wallawalla.edu/pub/mirrors/ftp.gentoo.org"

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

It's going to be difficult to find a distribution that keeps on the bleeding edge but keeps everything in distro. Certainly compiling would seem the best way for you to go whether it's with Arch, Gentoo, Slackware or FreeBSD. Personally I'm starting to warm to "bleeding old" distributions like CentOS.

[trent.josephsen]

For myself I just try to keep my AUR usage to a minimum, and it's not usually a problem when I do have to upgrade things. I don't really use anything proprietary except Flash, though.

If I found that managing my AUR packages was eating too much time... I'm tempted to say Gentoo, but Gentoo does have that annoying tendency to consume all your free time. Fedora is probably a good option if you're ok with giving up rolling release. If you like the rolling release model, though, I'm sorry but Arch is by far the least maintenance-intensive option I've used, nearly on par with Debian. Fuduntu looks cool, though, really. If I were in your situation that's probably the one I would try first.

Be aware that anyone can upload a package to AUR, and the packages are not signed. If you do not verify the PKGBUILD is trustworthy, you could find yourself downloading and installing malware. This is why yaourt doesn't allow you to suppress the editing prompt. (I guess packer does, though, so if you think that's an acceptable risk, nobody's stopping you from using that.)

[Rukiri]

I generally find the aur packages buggy and half the time they never install, that's why I prefer ebuilds mainly because they are apart of the official repos but they just seem to work and the packages themselves even run better as well (don't know the reason) but they do, cinnamon for example the control panel will not open but does in gentoo. It's all about packaging, I wouldn't consider arch on my main system but as a test system sure if it's from the official repos if not, no thanks.

Debian sid or siduction and obviously gentoo are the best choices at least in my opinion, would be nice to see another ubuntu distro but was rolling release, I like apt-get, but installing every 6 months is a pain<.<

apt-get, yum, and portage are the best package managers for linux, pacman is nice but it's no apt-get or portage.

Again if you like the debian experience I'd stay with debian and go sid with it's rolling release, it's the only distro outside gentoo I'd go with these days.
The cool factor of arch just wore off after while, it's great it let's you build your system but if I want to build my system from scratch I'm going source and I believe ubuntu/debians repos have a much large application count than arch. Gentoo pretty much has everything.
If you want gentoo I can pretty much sum up your install with a quick text but reading the handbook is nice, everytime I install I go through it albet being lazy and just copying the commands mainly as I already know what they do and what they're for.

There's also another distro Funtoo, the main difference is that it's portage is git based ny rsync, personally.. I'd rather have a more up to date portage tree as funtoo just started adding gnome 3.8 today, while gentoo started adding on day 2 of release (no distro has the latest on day 1, maybe large distros like ubuntu or fedora(especially fedora, if you want a good gnome experience fedora is a nice system but remember to reinstall every release... that's the bad part about fedora it's a nice system/os but it plagues you to update constantly, I work with a lot of game code and updating is not an option which is why I went with a rolling release, )

Fedora
Gentoo
Debian Sid (or the distro siduction which is based on debian sid)
Funtoo (slightly better core system than gentoo and git based portage but the tree isn't as up to date as gentoo and doesn't have every package that gentoo does)
Fuduntu (A Rolling released - sort of)
OpenSuse (The build system is nice and overall it's a nice distro that uses kde)

[andrew.46]

My base system is Slackware and I believe this shares a common feel with Arch. The dependency tracking issue with Slackware is only an issue for people who have never actually used Slackware .

[mamamia88]

So i settled on xubuntu 13.04. While it was installing I wrote a bash script that added all the ppas i wanted, downloaded all the apps i wanted, and completely removed most of everything I didn't want. My nexus 7 mounts right out of the box and it feels super smooth. It also came with the theme I use on every xfce distro anyway albatross. Gotta say I might have a keeper. Not a rolling release but I'll keep up hope.

[os2]

Might as well have gone with Fuduntu. But the jungle is so crowded there you'd have difficultly seeing the wood from the trees. That's what it's always like coming from Arch. I don't like the AUR either as it was too much work and many free packages were missing.
Better yet, openSUSE, this is like God's Distro.

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

^openSUSE is ok but you flatter it to call it God's distro.

[os2]

Maybe you care to make a suggestion then?

I've gone crazy over the past month or so hopping from Ubuntu, Mint (Debby Derivatives), Fuduntu, Fedora, Arch. Here's the list I had to go on: distrowatch.com

I was able to find all my apps under one roof only under openSUSE.

[iamkuriouspurpleoranj]

openSUSE has the same over-reliance on community repos/builds, so would it meet the needs of the OP?

Glad you found a distro you like but my experience has not been so rosy. As one example, I can install XMind on anything (Fedora, CentOS, Manjaro, Mageia etc.) and it only exists as a .deb package. Yet I've never had any luck with installing it on openSUSE. That's surely my fault but nonetheless I find "God's distro" an exageration.

To avoid reliance on third party packagers but stay on the bleeding edge, you'll need to compile.