it so that even "distros" with just a handful of customizations or application installs would still be useful instead of being merely distracting and misleading and making a mess of things and trying to do too many things at once (as many distros now unfortunately do)!

There are even systems that could make creating such easy install script wizards only take a few lines of code. For example, Tcl/Tk makes it possible to write a GUI in just a few lines of code and is supported across practically all Linux/Unix systems. Even in C and C++ a GUI can be made swiftly and expressively with something like FLTK or SDL + DearImGUI. GUIs are not actually as tortuous to create as the big three (Gtk, Qt, wx) would lead many to believe.

The present system of giant monolithic distros with barely any modularity or interoperability amongst each other (in terms of customization, not software support), which requires users to download gigabytes of data for kilobytes worth of trivial customization scripting in terms of actual effect is in fact incredibly and staggeringly wasteful and inflexible and even antithetical to user freedom (since you can't easily mix and match distros' components) if you actually think about it from first principles.

Imagine if there was a "WizardWatch" website (or whatever other name you prefer) in addition to "DistroWatch" that instead distributed such modular highly polished install scripts. Imagine downloading "shellcustomizerwizard" and "wallpapercollectiongrabber" and so on (just whatever handful of extremely tiny scripts are relevant to you) instead of running around in circles constantly having to make do with dozens of distros that force you to accept both things you like and things you don't and to waste monumental amounts of time and energy and network bandwidth throughout the process.

If such a better system became the norm then it could easily drastically improve and empower the whole ecosystem. Small "distros" would no longer be irrelevant and useless, but would instead be lightweight and modular and useful to almost anyone. Hosting costs would drop by like 99% for all the most trivial (not foundational) distros. Users would become much less likely to become exhausted by the search for distros (often giving up on Linux/Unix in the process) and would instead be empowered to quickly build up exactly what they want. This is especially true if the experience is polished. All of it could be more stable and reliable too, since it'd all be small modifications of root distros instead of giant unknown monolith ISOs.

Done right, it could be a tremendous improvement I think, causing a domino/ripple effect indirectly bolstering virtually all aspects of the entire Linux/Unix/BSD ecosystem. With both command-line and TUI/GUI support, it would also be made to be easy for everyone, both newbie and expert alike.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the idea. Thanks for reading and have a good day/night/etc!

Keep fighting the good fight. It's wonderful that Linux and the Unix/BSD systems exist. Society needs more freedom and morally-grounded respect for human dignity now more than ever, etc!

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