I've decided to make my own Ubuntu Respin
 

Years ago, I worked on a popular "Micro XP" distribution which got quite popular until I abandoned the project. I asked myself, could I truly bring anything new or new enough to justify another Ubuntu respin? As I dug more and deeper into Ubuntu, the greater the answer was yes. From my point of view, there are simply too many compromises regardless of the distro, even the exceptional Bodhi. That being said, I don't enjoy the "beautifying" aspects of distro respins. Which is why I have come to the tentative distribution name of Uranium. If it can power fission that drives power on the planet, it can power your daily computing life.
I am currently running Lubuntu 18.04.1, and though I realize Bodhi is overall much better especially in looks, responsiveness and configuration it still falls short for me.

Similar to Bodhi, I subscribe to the philosophy that less is more. However, as I examined Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 (the Ubuntu core), I had a few realizations. First, I could only justify removing 20 packages without some sort of compromise. I have printed package lists and done comparisons, so I have reason to believe Bohdi has removed a lot more than 20. So either Jeff is way better than me or one aggressive son of a gun. The behavior can be likened to Jeff being more like Ubuntu "cutting edge", and myself more like Debian. Which is hilarious because I have always refused to install it. Another realization, I had is that Ubuntu bloat does not manifest itself in the same way as
Windows bloat; like not at all. Packages themselves do not make linux slow, so leaner isn't necessarily better. It's the stuff on top of Ubuntu server that loads that's the real bloat. I noticed almost all distributions (Bodhi excluded), have archaic slow applications in their default install which is another of saying the love fell very short. Also even if you make the ISO small, the process of application installs and their dependencies will make short work of your efforts from an install size point of view. So fundamentally, you can't worry about install size nor the number of packages because the moment you make the distro your own that is out of your control.

With all that being said, my ISO is garanteed to be bigger than Bohdi, but I will aim to make it even leaner and faster than Bodhi, and hopefully prettier than the ugly Lubuntu, but keep in mind, it is called tentatively called Uranium. Basically, I am aiming for increased stability, increased speed, modern essential apps and naturally increased ISO size :) Do not be fooled, linux can run even faster than what Bohdi portrays. If this is a beauty contest, I lose. Still, Bodhi 5.0 is looking mighty fine.

If you want it lean, use the ubuntu mini.iso. Install the minimal system packages on top and you can reboot in a working system that offers almost nothing except the tty. You need to clear your apt-cache to avoid that a whole task-related bundle of packages gets removed when you remove just one of those. Now start building what you think to be needed to "power the world" of uranium. Be careful, the outcome might be nuclear. :D

Useful info here

The Ubuntu mini iso is just a net install. When you select "Basic Ubuntu Server" its the same as installing Ubuntu server. Also, the mini iso isn't supported by cubic because cubic expects a squash file system which the mini doesn't have. I you don't believe that mini is no better, do a package comparison between Ubuntu Server and Bohdi. For sanity, ignore the libraries. Then you will see Bohdi consists of as I have. I'm performing the same examination with linux lite. However, I like enlightenment apps. They are modern and speedy except for the terminal; without a doubt ROXterm is superior. But if you look at Xpad, its impressive how it handles larger files ~3 MB when compared to the rest of the competition, but nothing quite beats Notepadqq. I hate that modern distros still use text editors that choke on a 3 MB; that really bothers me; only the best of the best should make it.

Good luck! If you're "eXPerience" then thanks much for your winxp distros, my p4 can dual boot MicroXP.

When I last tried lubuntu, the thing I immediately noticed was how fast the terminal was. Terminology is really slow to paste into, something I do often, when I right click and have to wait before the menu comes up. So I started using lxterminal under bodhi. Now I'll have to give ROXterm a try; and the text editors you mentioned, I don't really like epad that much anyway but nano works good.

I initially chose bodhi, after trying several other distros, cuz I was trying to make p4 with 512mb useful. Liked it so much I've now installed it on another old desktop (athlon64 1.5gb) and older 1GB laptop. And just a couple days ago decided to install it on my relatively modern laptop. I tried xubuntu for a while first but didn't see much I liked better than Bodhi, and since already familiar with Bodhi, decided to go for it.

For comparison you may want to look at puppy linux too, that was the other ubuntu-based distro I tried that seemed pretty light, but it seems over-customized over-simplified compared to bodhi, but definatley some lightweight apps there.

not quite sure why you posted this to the Bodhi sub-forum; if i was the bodhi maintainer i'd feel vaguely insulted.

also, yet another distro? meh...