[ALUG] Newbie Meeting & Repo Question

Hi I've been dabbling with Linux for just over a year and am now consistently using Linux Mint albeit secondary to Windows. Do you ever run a newbies meeting, I still consider myself as that? Also, how is it possible to know (other than the approved Mint/Ubuntu repositories) which repositories/software is going to be ok, I feel like I may be missing out on stuff and in any case even in the approved repos they have disclaimers. Isn't Linux basically Linux won't most stuff play nicely together ? Steve