I thought "sid" and "unstable" were exactly the same thing. But in another thread (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...or-sid-659201/ ), I saw them listed as having separate repositories.

What's the difference, then? I would like to know, because I just reinstalled my distro and am about to add deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free to my sources list. Should I also try to add this separate unstable repo, if it exists?

They're the same thing. One is just a link to the other. With Sid it doesn't really matter which is in your sources.list. But with the other branches of Debian, putting the codename vs "stable" or "testing" can have big implications when a new release comes out.

For example in a month or two, Debian 5 (lenny) will move from stable to oldstable and Squeeze will move from testing to stable. So if your sources.list says "stable" and you run an update (thinking you'll just get security updates), you're going to instead get an upgrade to squeeze after it's released. If you have it say "lenny", it won't do the upgrade until you go in and change it to "squeeze".

In turn, if you have "squeeze" now, when it becomes stable you'll stop getting newer programs as they become available. You'll only get security updates. So you have to think a bit about your intent.

But if you're tracking "sid" or "unstable" it's irrelevent...

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