AG:
With this in mind, what do the more experienced sid users do in terms of
the daily updates of packages that come through - for example - the
Update Notification?
I usually install all available upgrades daily (or even twice a day)
using 'sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitufe safe-upgrade'. Please note
that most of the time it is not a good idea to do 'full-upgrade's
because this operation might remove packages you actually need. It is
better to invoke 'aptitude full-upgrade' only when you are fully aware
that it might break your system.
It is also a good idea to use the package apt-listchanges. This informs
you about changelogs and news items of each package you upgrade. You
should at least read the news files or otherwise you might miss
important configuration changes. Additionally, you might want to install
apt-listbugs which notifies you about open bugs of the packages you are
about to install. I haven't found that to be very helpful, though.
What I think is important, too: you should be able to use the command
line and some command line editor (vim, emacs, nano...). If X or your
bootloader is broken, you will need them.
Finally, watching this list and some of the announce lists help you to
kepp track what's going on in sid at the moment. That way you have a
chance to notice when you should not upgrade certain packages or abstain
from upgrading a few days/weeks altogether (usually at the start of a
release cycle).
J.
Jochen