which distro has the latest GCC

Arch Linux.

This is rather subjective, as all major distros with the exception of CentOS have gcc 4.7.2 available:

https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/i686/gcc/

http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/gcc

http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gcc

http://packages.gentoo.org/package/sys-devel/gcc

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/gcc

That said, Debian and Gentoo require a bit more work in order to get 4.7.2.

However, unless you're doing extremely time-critical development and know that you need the new optimizations provided in 4.7.2, 4.6.3, 4.5, and 4.4 are all working versions of GCC, easily available, and in the general sense, more likely to contain fewer bugs than 4.7, which is still undergoing active development.

We all know that if you're not running the latest HEAD of the dev testing unstable branch, you'll be the laughing stock of all your peers.

• Les

@akerl:

…you'll be the laughing stock of all your peers.

• Les

Huh huh huh huh huh - huh huh

you said "pee"

huh huh huh huh huh…

James, now channelling Beavis and Butthead

Ubuntu 12.10: 4.7.2

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS: 4.7.2

Ubuntu 11.10: 4.6.1

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: 4.7.2

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS: 4.2.4

At this point, however, nobody should be deploying new installations of 11.10 or 8.04 LTS, since support for them both expires in April. All of the Ubuntu releases that will be supported for a decent amount of time (10.04 LTS until 2015, 12.04 LTS until 2017, and 12.10 until 2014) have the latest version of GCC.

The above may well be true but if you want the easiest method possible for keeping your whole system up to date then Arch (or Gentoo) is the way to go.

How is it easier to keep an Arch or Gentoo system up to date? Doing this in Ubuntu or Debian is normally as simple as executing "aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade"…

If you're referring to Arch being a rolling-release style distro, then I would point out that that ease comes with a huge cost in terms of stability. Rolling releases mean that any update might include a major revision on a key package, while fixed releases means you can upgrade knowing you'll only ever get minor revisions for that version of the distro.