OP: my suggestion is to install a minimal/netinstall in a virtual machine or spare system. As you do your own research, based on specific questions asked on tech/Linux/Debian forums, you can practice their implementation on your own terms. Individual research cannot be replaced. You might, however, consider hiring someone to do that work for you.
I am a business person who has many ideas and goals in this life...
As a savvy business entrepreneur, surely you understand the consequences of negative PR, and the benefits of hiring a tech ambassador of some sort to perform the heavy-lifting of research on your behalf. Then you can scrap what I said about "individual research" because someone will be financially incentivized to do that for you.
I...am trying to make my own Linux OS so I can switch myself and others from Corporations like Microsoft who are greed driven and spy on their users for advertising and profits.
While
you may not think you're "trying to reinvent the wheel," it sure sounds like you are. How exactly do you think the corporate-data-mongrel Microsoft started -- or even Android's popularity (its reliance on proprietary driver blobs), for that matter? I think you already answered that:
I did not say I want to make the whole OS closed source, I said only certain parts
This kind of logic and business practice led to the impetus driving the LibreM, by the way, because so many Android phones require, you guessed it, closed-source drivers and inaccessible documentation; this is why ports like Lineage, while popular, are nonetheless limited -- not only in their range of devices, but also in their ability to effectively deter spyware (ie, phone modems). It all has to do with proprietary software, whether or not it's an entire OS or just "certain parts." In other words, this wheel has already been invented; you're late to the game.
The post of mine that you responded to included a shotgun of understandable concerns that are, nonetheless, well-documented and available through even superficial searching. I'll bullet-point some ideas, though.
-XFCE4 menu (not whisker menu) is simple, and Openbox menu as well, with some tweaking (again, do some homework)
-Research the differences between a "desktop environment" and "session"; you can include many benefits of a DE within a session
-"Installing with one file" makes little sense; it sounds like you're referring to binary blobs, but those often require dependencies. A lot of windows installers just happen to include them in the installer -- which is also how you get crapware installed alongside the app you originally wanted, btw. That's why most *nix users endorse package managers and manually building from source.
Final thoughts:
-What makes great *nix distros great is that most users aren't concerned with the "fragmentation" (eg, the example you said about conky vs kde nomenclature). What many people (like you) perceive as a hinderance, others see as a huge benefit,
because it permits choice at the expense of ease-of-access. You might find yourself fish-out-of-water, because unless someone is getting paid to do that for you, I doubt you'll find that kind of help (or willful advocacy) for free
-After reading through your posts, now that I know your reputation as a businessman, and since successful business people cater to their customers' needs and wants through focus groups and surveys, I want you to know that I would hate using your distribution; it sounds like another Windows/Android, and I know too much about the nixes -- through individual research -- to really want an MS parody. Keep up with your ambitions, though.