This post made me notice that currently there’s no obvious place (About page…) where NS8 version is shown, unless I’ve missed it which is quite possible.
Is there a NS8 version per se or just core modules versions and a general NS8 image release version to track roadmap and milestones?
There is no version number for NS8. Project milestones are numbered like 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, etc. These numbers track milestones, not the version of the system itself, as explained in the milestone announcement post.
The prebuilt image is updated with each Core release.
Since Core 3.0.0, the Software Center’s Core Apps page shows the versions of individual cluster components.