needrestart is useful - one can simply deinstall if one don't like it. Background:
After upgrades it is possible that old processes are running - or old libs are used. Not the best of all ideas. Needrestart is tracking such cases. And don't use synaptic with siduction, it might lead sooner or later to problems - i guess sooner.
insane and xperimental are meant serious - will change the most of the things to be the same as in patience, but thats not the point. The point is that we often use new and untested things in experimental, buildd-repos are active and such things - it will make unstable more funny, esp with incomplete package builds - have fun with experimental.
Edit: The black and grey desktop was intentional - one should see at the first view, what one is running. Just to prevent situations like: Oh, didn't notice that i running paintitblack instead of patience - ok, more or less obsolete with the renaming from paintitblack to xperimental.