New Server Admin Question!

Hello,

I am fairly new to linux in general. I have had experience with it for over two years now but i am still catching onto things. I recently set up a fully working ISPconfig3 which took quite a bit of learning on my end to get it to where it is. I feel confident in the server and of its security. I guess my question relates to good maintaining habits specifically those that involve package updates.

I am a bit trigger happy when it comes to updates be it for good or worse. I know alot of these packages include security updates & patches which are important. I also tend to want the latest version of a program and although sometimes that is not the preferred way to go. Is this generally ok with ISPconfig? I am running Ubuntu 11.10 x64 and after doing an apt-get upgrade these are the packages available to upgrade now:

Code:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server
The following packages will be upgraded:
  apt apt-transport-https apt-utils gzip language-pack-en libapache2-mod-fcgid
  libapt-inst1.3 libapt-pkg4.11 libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc6 libc6-dev
  libfreetype6 libmysqlclient16 libpng12-0 linux-libc-dev multiarch-support
  mysql-client mysql-client-5.1 mysql-client-core-5.1 mysql-common
  mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server-core-5.1 python-pam tzdata
26 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 34.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 352 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Generally speaking will an upgrade of packages such as MySql and such hurt the system or should i not go with this? I feel as though i should read the changelog of each package but to be frank its time i dont have is that what others do?

Any suggestions appreciated. Thank You!

 

Thank you for the reply really helpful!