No official announcement yet, but today's point release has gone live. I just updated 112 packages.
Debian 12 is my first step into the Debian world. Is it just a matter of sudo apt update/upgrade to receive the release or are there extra steps?
No extra steps, just update as you normally do. The only thing you'll notice is that more packages are updated. The updates you get between point releases are for security issues and high-impact bugs. Lower priority bug fixes and updates are rolled into the point releases.
Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.