What about -testing? I would think that would be somewhat safer territory for a new user.

Maybe you could decode this for me
http://maemo.org/packages/repository/

What's the difference between free and non-free? Or i386 and armel? Should I care? I see almost-but-not-quite-the-same lists in any given repository that differs only by those suffixes. Why is that?

And thank you for yielding to my point about descriptions and screenshots. It's no small point, I feel.