[lloeki]

> things break more frequently

Yes it might be more frequent, yet each time it is of a more limited scope since it concerns a single, maybe two packages. Following the news and maybe the forums helps a lot. Example regarding the scope: I upgraded some machines Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10, and so much breakage occurred that the machines required such an extend of work that they simply were declared unrecoverable and reinstalled from scratch.

> use Debian Testing

In the months following a release, Debian testing essentially == Sid, and breakage is infamous.

[dsrguru]

Yes, following the news is incredibly useful for preventing breakage on updates, and the forums are especially useful for repairing breakage since other people will often have had the same issue on a big update. Probably half the time something "breaks" on a `pacman -Syu' for me, it's just a quick fix that was the result of me neglecting to read the front page news.