Somewhat Reticent wrote:

If the base distro is only up to RC2, how have these spins been derived?  Conversion from DebIan?  Are there (DIY?) scripts/checklists for that?
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You can make a derivative from a release even before RC2. You install it, add whatever you like, configure it, and if you think it would be useful for others, make a live installable iso and upload it. There are few such distros uploaded to sourceforge even around May 2016. They are still good, for all you have to do is update and upgrade, and they'd become up to date. One good thing with Devuan is that such upgrade doesn't break your install. There are even Ascii (Testing) ones available.

People make "derivatives," because they like (love) Devuan.

Indeed!

Just today, I did a fresh and full install of MiyoLinux onto a USB to use as a portable OS. MiyoLinux was released last year while Devuan was still in Beta. It updated flawlessly with just an update and upgrade, but I had to do a dist-upgrade to get the latest desktop-base installed.

As a side-note, that's one of the great benefits of fsmithred's Refracta Installer...it makes it very easy to install the OS onto a USB for use as a portable system.

If the base distro is only up to RC2, how have these spins been derived?  Conversion from DebIan?  Are there (DIY?) scripts/checklists for that?
…

You can make a derivative from a release even before RC2. You install it, add whatever you like, configure it, and if you think it would be useful for others, make a live installable iso and upload it. There are few such distros uploaded to sourceforge even around May 2016. They are still good, for all you have to do is update and upgrade, and they'd become up to date. One good thing with Devuan is that such upgrade doesn't break your install. There are even Ascii (Testing) ones available.

People make "derivatives," because they like (love) Devuan.

Devuan has been incredibly stable under most conditions for the last 7-8 months that i've used it, despite the Beta and now RC status, works great for rolling your own distro already, but then my understanding was that this was always one of the main goals of Devuan, to be a base distro to work off of. The devs are very encouraging about it, and there's a lot of support for folks who are trying to do so. Lots of good tools being developed to automate the process, but I expect everyone does it slightly different.

I do mine by de-construction first, then rebuild and use Refracta-tools to make installable hybrid iso's.

You can also try out the new live-sdk, some are using that, i've tried it and it's next on my list of things i'd like to learn better.