i.e., their own version based upon an official release shared with the public?

Yes, some people do - check out which distros are based on which....

https://distrowatch.com/search.php?o...=Active#simple

Yes. Almost every distro is based on someone's customizing a pre-existing distro and then releasing it. Check out the Linux Family Tree.

Even Slackware, the oldest distro still actively maintained (by just a few months), was based on earlier work, in Slackware's case, Softlanding Linux System aka SLS.

In general one would need to specify the differences, how the new distro is different from the original one. In some cases these changes are not really useful, in some other cases the new distro will be really successful. Don't forget maintaining/releasing a distro means continuous activity - we have a lot of "abandoned" distros too.
Anyway yes, they were created and will be created in the future too.

Some do. One friend had his own distro for personal use but made it available for download. He kept it maintained for some years before work and family obligations left no time for it. Another had made one for the large university at which he worked. That was a real time saver until politics ensured that he had to find another job. The former was Debian based and the latter was done from the ground up. But Ubuntu would be a good base to start from.

Also rather than doing a full distro, you can do a slightly modified respin.

That kind of customization is not limited to GNU/Linux or even Linux in general. For a while I made a custom release of the OpenBSD operating system for some laboratories I was maintaining.

If you're looking for encouragement, I'd say go for it.

Ok, I should clarify.

I do not mean a packaged distro creating a new family using the Ubuntu respositories, what we can all see, but less extreme options.

I mean someone taking Ubuntu & tweaking it a little & still calling it Ubuntu ('My Version, or 'Version with a Twist'), then release it to the public, TurboC's slightly modified respin.

If respins exist, where can we find them?

in that case you might want a feature package only (probably), not a full distro

I want a better version of Ubuntu, & it's not Mint.

What would make Ubuntu like you want (better)? You'd have to 'define' first why you don't like the default Ubuntu distro before kicking off your search. For example if it is just because you don't like Gnome, pick another spin like KUbuntu, or LUbuntu or ....

You could look in DistroWatch under Ubuntu derivatives.

However, you can make your own modifications and roll them into a Live image which seems to be what your original question is about.

In some cases a special package is good enough to install a well defined environment, there is no need to release and maintain a new distro. And also I'm not really sure if personalized setting or preferences is a new distro at all. But anyway if it is good enough people will love it.

Or even just a post-installation script launched via kickstart. That can do wonders for configuration adjustments and addition and removal of packages.

I guess we should hear more about the context in which these change will deployed.

leanness, echoing everyone's bloat sentiment, all-in-ram feature, like Bodhi or Puppy, & the XFCE standard

Has anyone squashed Xubuntu? That's what I want.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/2757...n-grub-options

I'll check those out thanks.