Am 03.06.2013 01:36, schrieb david:

I always do a backup first. Have had trivial things like changes in X video drivers make X unusable.

Although I benefit from the developments in multimedia
software I'm not sure I like exposing my system to so many
opportunities for failure.

A strategy I've used in past is to *not* upgrade until I
need something. Maybe could call it it "choose your own
freeze".

I usually just upgrade what I want when I want.

I do it the other way round, I put on hold what I didn't want to upgrade, and upgrade the rest.
I never do a backup, and in the last 10 Years I didn't ever need one. ;-)
I usually do apt-get update && apt-get -u dist-upgrade and read the output, that gives me enough information if I need to put packages on hold, or if I could safely just run the full upgrade.
If a package is broken after upgrade, I just downgrade it to the one from testing.