Yes. It is reasonable to expect that distribution providers will begin supplying reusable templates and declarative manifests that define complete system states. These artifacts would allow others to modify, extend, or replace components in a controlled and reproducible way, rather than assembling systems manually.
If a particular piece of software is not suitable, it can be substituted at the manifest level, with the system rebuilt or re-resolved into a new, consistent state. This approach aligns with existing practices in declarative infrastructure and system management, where configuration defines the outcome rather than imperative steps.
Under this model, creating and branding a custom distribution becomes a matter of defining and maintaining a set of manifests and associated artifacts, rather than building an entire system from scratch. This is not speculative; similar patterns already exist, where reproducibility and composability are central design principles.
I have been working to extend this to build from scratch, but it is a lot of work building the infrastructure (integrated apps) needed.
