[PLUG] Gentoo / Arch / other : please advise

[Mayuresh]

I am looking for a suitable distro for following usage pattern:

1. Rolling updates with a small base system. (No huge downloads every 6
months and hours of upgrade and configuration time. This is where I am
parting ways with Fedora which I trusted and used for many years. What
triggers a change is a recent upgrade has broken my system beyond
imagination.)

2. Source as well as binary options for installations.

3. Fairly leading edge base and packages. (Unlike conservative BSDs one of
which I will be anway using or slackware.)

4. Stable. I will be using this as a backup or secondary OS, with primary
OS as NetBSD. I'll be anyway be experimenting, making and breaking things
on NetBSD. So need the secondary environment to be stable that can be
easily fallen back to. Also, certain things like printer, scanner etc
don't as yet work on NetBSD, so do certain applications, for which I want
to turn to a reliable alternative.

Evaluating Arch and Gentoo. Somewhat confused about what suits better for
above profile.

Mayuresh.