... what "distro" 'should' I be using since I have a custom board that's based on imx8mm evk but I don't necessarily want/need wifi, bluetooth, video, touchscreen etc.???

Is poky what's causing my pain?

I've been doing TI based builds forever and recently switched over to NXP based products so still learning the lay of the land.  I finally discovered I don't think I want to be building based off NXP releases from codeaurora and that Freescale is the better base for our products but not 100% clear what distro's are available and which ones I should focus on.

Regards,

Brian