A distribution is a group of software that somebody thought should be included in a set.

If we were talking about Windows, it would mean that somebody wanted just the absolute minimum, so they strip out all the adware and bloat, but there wouldn't be much else you could do, since there isn't anything left except Notepad.

A business distro would have all the Microsoft Business apps and Edge, A developer distro would just have Code, games would just have whatever it is that gamers need.

Linux distros are the same, Red Hat wanted something they could charge for and has wide appeal, Suse wanted something similar, but with more lizards. Alma and Rocky want the wide audiance, but doesn't have the developers. These all use 'yum' or 'dnf' for package management. Suse also has 'Yast'.

Linux Mint is based on older but known-to-be-stable software that appeals to most users, and it's based on Ubuntu, that is in turn, based on Debian. These use 'apt', 'dpkg' and others for package management.

This site explains more about distrubutions; https://linuxvox.com/blog/what-is-distro-in-linux/

This site keeps running totals on downloads for many distros; https://distrowatch.com/

This site shows how to do the same (or very similar) things in different distros; https://www.server-world.info/en/