it is said from KatolaZ

The safest way would actually be to manually download the deb packages of apt from the debian-security pool (more information available below), or to use pkgmaster.devuan.org in your sources.list to do the upgrade (pkgmaster.devuan.org is not a rough mirror...).

^This part is that I'm confused.

I've done APT successfully upgraded to version 1.0.9.8.5 2 via "deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged jessie-security"
Is it necessary for me to switch hosts to "pkgmaster.devuan.org" or make other manual interventions?

Forgive me for my lack of understanding on this part.

BR,
Nili

this maybe : https://devuan.org/os/keyring/

I have got the 5.2.18 Debian Stretch package loaded directly from Oracle installed on a Ryzen2700X and 32 GByte of RAM, no issues.

Maybe thats the way to go.

Good luck, Rolf

I know that Synaptic Package Manager is installed which is great, but an average user couldn't find new software using it.  So if an 'app store' of some sort was present that would be great.  I tried 'sudo apt-get install gnome-software', but for some unknown reason, it will only show me whats already installed and nothing online.  I may have messed that up, because at first I tried to install it using a debian package.  I have since tried to reinstall via command line, no success.

No GUI third party/proprietary drivers program like 'software-properties-gtk'.  I know that doing a google search would also yield the correct drivers.  But it would be nice to have a program that would search the hardware of your computer and offer additional drivers.

I guess PPAs aren't supported, or maybe I don't know how its done in devuan.
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/deepin-sc
    aptsources.distro.NoDistroTemplateException: Error: could not find a distribution template for Devuan/ascii
I would question using this OS as my main because I may run across a scenario where I desperately need something installed and it has to be done by PPA.

Repositories that can create a FrankenDebian if used with Debian Stable:
    -  Debian testing release (currently buster)
    -  Debian unstable release (also known as sid)
    -  Ubuntu, Mint or other derivative repositories are not compatible with Debian!
    -  Ubuntu PPAs

No GUI user management.

Another minor thing, I thought I needed the 'desktop-live' distro because thats what I've learned to do..  So I downloaded that first, tried it and successfully installed it.  But it was kinda hell to do so.  Extremely complicated install.  Once installed not everything was right.  I have since figured out that I needed the 'netinst' instead.  I would really like to try and get the 'Refracta' stuff to work and customize/make my own ISO that would be hardware independent.  I have yet to give that a shot.

we don't have systemd installed, but all these packages are hard coded to look for it anyway?
this doesn't seem like a good practice at all.  !?!?!?

3.2) Encryption: The installer can only encrypt root and home filesystems. A separate boot partition is optional and will be unencrypted if present. For full protection of your data you should not use a separate swap partition. If there is no swap partition, a swap file will be created on the root filesystem and that will be encrypted.