Most C binaries usually do not contain everything needed for their execution. It would make them too platform-specific. What most c programs do is that they use standard c library from platform for low-level things and communication with the system like memory allocation or stdin/stdout things, for example.
You are probably right. It is probably even more important than kernel.
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It is easy to install another shell indeed, but it is quite difficult to configure it. While installation of DE is usually done with just one command. And you can use linux without DE, but not without shell. Many distributions even do not install DE by default at all.
I mean “something out of ordinary about it affects your experience with this distro the most”.
I would say, that from most important to least important components are:
If you want serious optimizations - then Gentoo is your choice. But seriously, there won’t be any serious difference between distributions. What really matters here are DEs and browsers. I would recommend some kind of lightweight window manager like i3 or dwm. If you do not want to configure everything yourself, then your choice is lxde/lxqt. Also, you can use distros without systemd (void, artix, devuan, gentoo etc), but that does not matter that much.
It is extremely fast and simple. Also, it has its own “aur”, called xbps-src. But nowadays void is not just xbps, it is also defined by runit (which is also extremely fast and simple) and minimalist dependencies (you will have to manually install many things, that other distributions ship reinstalled, in case you need them. By the way, if you prefer GUI package manager, there is octoxbps (not an advantage of xbps, but you might want that when you try void linux).
Void was created just for testing xbps. Without xbps there would be no Void.
Various mint apps come preinstalled.
Same design, different technologies. LXDE was dropped in favor of lxqt. In terms of performance both are almost the same, but in the future, when all of old code will be dropped from lxqt, it would be lighter. Also lxqt looks more modern compared to lxde.
If you want sane defaults, try lxqt. It is still a huge improvement in performance after cinnamon, but you don’t have to manually configure everything like in WMs.
I would recommend the opposite. You are limited in customizing Wayland WMs due to less amount of tools.
I, personally, use Void Linux, which is a ‘flagship’ runit distro. But if you want a bigger package repository, then devuan is also a good choice.
Basically, if you do not see any reason to switch from systemd then you should not. The thing with systemd is that it is really big and complicated. If you just use defaults of your distro systemd works just fine, but if you want to (or have to) change something fundamental, then dealing with this monstrosity becomes a bit of pain. You basically end with the situation where you are in a war with your own PC. After some time of this, dealing with an init system that does exactly what you tell it to do feels refreshing. There is also the part, where some init systems (sysVinit and runit) boot faster then others (openRC and systemd), but it is not that significant. I use runit BTW. With my setup I spend much less time dealing with runit then I used to with systemd. That being said I still miss some of systemd features.
Gentoo users? Void users?