Install Cinnamon and only cinnamon (or... how to create my own distro?)

[guiverc]

Debian tends to be old, debian testing is more up to date

Now maybe a good time to try Debian; Debian Bullseye is only ~27 hours from it's release so it's packages are somewhat similar in many areas with my Ubuntu impish.

(Debian testing is now bookworm with no packages changed other than release name as of last night my local time; AEST)

[dietervansteenw]

All, thank you very much for some very informative and helpful replies. I'll still need time to either

• fully grasp what makes a distro a distro
• or let go of the idea that I really want to understand and stop nitpicking

As a result of the last reply from Guiverc, I found this page which helps me a bit better understand what defines a distribution. Apparently it is also things such as the installer, policies, the people behind it, ... Not just the end result (the ISO).

[dietervansteenw]

Are you familiar with Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition?
https://linuxmint.com/download.php

Yes, I had been made aware of that option. Although I think I am fairly okay-ish with using Linux, I still need to search how to do things (or fix things after I've tried said things). I've always used *buntu kind of distros (or Debian on one type of machines) so I figured it would be best to stay with that for now. I know Mint has a good name but felt that I shouldn't make things harder for myself at the moment and get better at what I'm working with first. Maybe that's a stupid idea...

Actually, I've been thinking of creating my own system based on Yocto for some embedded projects I'm working on. While that would be a lot of trial and error it would probably be rather helpful in understanding what makes a Linux system run and how thing fit together.

Maybe I'll just install Mint Cinnamon Edition on a separate machine or in a VM, which would help me understand what it means to run another distro (Mint instead of Ubuntu) and see what the differences are.

[dietervansteenw]

I'll give some thoughts.
Flavors of Ubuntu (https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours) just have the default desktop (GNOME for Ubuntu Desktop) switched out and replaced with another one. The changing of that desktop may also mean other parts fo the software stack needs changing out too, eg.

That I realized, hence my question "if I take a stock Ubuntu and decide to use something like Cinnamon instead of the stock DE, is it still considered Ubuntu". But once again, that question might just be me making things difficult and not be really relevant.

Apart from that, thanks for the very extensive reply!