Devuan Release semantics
I'll make an effort to explore what it means (for me) when we speak of a Devuan Release.
Something is released, meaning it's becoming [b]public[/b] - making it available to more interested people.
More specificaly we make certain version of Devuan available to the public.So that is a special case of making software publicly accessible.
In the 70s,80s,90s software release meant making copies of certain software in a certain info-storage medium , packaging it and either transfering copies to brick-shops (visible in cities where people aggregate) or letting people know from mass media and giving instruction to facilitate brick-mail service. So there are public-space-time places where people's attention aggregates and focus. In ancient greek it was called [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora]agora[/url]. Are there in our times (2020s) digital public places funtioning like agora ? (i would dare to say that an internet search engine in a sense substitutes a trait that a cyber-agore should have).
From 2000s, 2010s, 2020s information and thus software can be made available via the internet. Using a computer connected to the internet a user can access information and thus software.
In our case a Devuan version is made available via the internet. But since we speak of a Devuan version released to the public we speak about a [b]Devuan Release[/b].
The [url=https://www.devuan.org/os/team]Devuan team[/url] and broadly the Devuan community creates and maintains what we call a [b]Devuan distro release[/b].
Devuan is a GNU+[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution]@[/url]Linux distribution . Thus [url=https://www.kernel.org/]@[/url]LinuxKerne; + [url=https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html]@[/url]GNUSoftware + third party software .
GNU software would currently broadly refer to software created and maintained by people either affiliated at some point in time to the GNU project . But also the GNU project historically due to its foundational pioneer work in establishing libre software and its central role in aiding in Linux kernel development (via accessible necessarys tool like gcc compiler and glibc among others) is mentioned not only from a practical standpoint (how many packages are in a linux distro) but from a honorable standpoint. Read Richard Stallman's argument regarding the naming aspect .[url=https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html]@[/url]Linux and the GNU System
The basic difference of of the software included in Devuan from other PC software "distros-bundles' is the libre licence terms. Althought the term distro is not used in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software]@[/url]proprietary software when a user installed e.g windows essentially installs a windows kernel plus basic user software.
A basic question from a user standpoint , not familiar with linux distros, would be : [b]What software is included ?[/b] and perhaps [b]What hardware is supported?[/b]
So Devuan (as a set of software packages adhering - aligning to certain community standards and goals) is made available via the internet. That means that Devuan (as software) is located in one computer that is connected to the internet. That means a computer thats follows some comm protocols in order to be accessible (like having a publicly usable address -url-) .
So it seem that the most essential information to 'get'
Here is an internet url : [b][url]https://files.devuan.org/[/url] [/b] That is an internet url that can be used in any computer 'connected to internet' to 'download' 'images of Devuan Releases' or to download a Devuan installer that will boot-strap a Devuan installation process.
Here is another internet url that i like : [url]http://deb.devuan.org/[/url] that contains the packages of all devuan releases (released devuan versions)