At any given point in time, there are three branches of the Debian system:

Stable (Current version: 3.0, "Woody")
This is the official released version of the software. Guaranteed not to change except for bug and security fixes.

Testing (Current version: "Sarge")
Testing is what eventually migrates to being Stable. While the fundamentals tend to work, Testing experiences periodic large-scale change; examples include new versions of GNOME or KDE entering the branch all at once. By definition, Testing has newer software than Stable, but also by definition, it is not the released product and may have problems.

Unstable (No version, always "Sid")
This branch causes no end of confusion. The "Unstable" moniker doesn't imply that the software itself is unstable; it means instead that the Debian aspects of the packages are unstable. Subject to change. Liable to explode without good cause or explanation. You WILL get the latest shiny toys by running Unstable, but there's a price to pay - and that price is periodic severe breakage, potentially at the system level.

I heard a good description of what it means to run Unstable (source lost, sorry): "If you're not happy running a system where mgetty can break, then you shouldn't be running Unstable. If you didn't understand that last sentence, you shouldn't be running Unstable. If you don't know what Unstable is, you shouldn't be running Unstable. If you don't know whether you should be running Unstable or not, you shouldn't be running Unstable."

Debian is a tradeoff. If you want stuff to work reliably and consistently and forever and ever amen, Stable is approaching that VMS-like Zen state. You pay the price for that in version numbers.

Testing is more up-to-date; Debian expects Testing to work. If stuff breaks in testing, that's a real bug. On the other hand, Testing is like the 80s - old enough to be unhip, not old enough to be retro.

Unstable is where the cool kids play, and it's where the latest stuff is, and it's also liable to break without warning and you get to keep all the pieces.

I spend a lot of time on #debian on irc.debian.org and it's frustrating to see people who get the glint of GNOME 2.6 in their eye yet are not comfortable configuring GRUB trying to wrestle with the fact that (for hypothetical example), their system has upgraded itself to Peter's Super Dev Daemon and all their devices now live in /PeterIsYourGod and they can't play MP3s in xmms any more.

It's harsh, but that's the way it has to be. I consider Debian to be like Mozilla - it's a demonstrator of all the cool things that the Debian project can do, but it's not necessarily something you'd want to run; instead, you might favour something built on Debian that makes use of all the supercool infrastructure in a more user-friendly manner. This is what Xandros and Lindows and Libranet and Knoppix have done.

So, in answer to your question: Yes, you should hold off. Make use of the -s switch to apt-get. Use tools like apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges to understand what's going to happen to your system.

As a user with presumably better things to do (like, say, idling on MUDs) than picking the bits out of a broken upgrade, I think you'll be served well by my advice.

Oh dear.

That's a sign of fearful Debian nerdery.

On a more serious note, you're lucky; you have access to a number of people (me, Greg, etc) who are capable and willing to help you out, and you have this odd obsession with having a working system which leads you to investigate whether things are going to break.

Many of the eejits out there running unstable because it gives them shiny toys don't have that luxury.

You can tell him how to do it directly, inbetween his fits of idling.