If you are more happy-go-lucky, you can just do 4, 6-8 and 10, like I did for years (closer to a decade, actually, I think 1997 til 2006, when I switched mostly

If you are more happy-go-lucky, you can just do 4, 6-8 and 10, like I did for years (closer to a decade, actually, I think 1997 til 2006, when I switched mostly to Ubuntu). However, I've always installed apt-listchanges and configured it to prompt me before installing anything, which (mostly?) removes need for 1 and 2, a bit like backing up removes need for 3.