Ok forgot to mention my puppyfied slax rolled in at around 105MB iso which includes their considerably larger kernel.
Thing is if there is a lack of in house built software then its natural for people to look elsewhere for sources. As I mentioned before custom building for puppy can be a way of keeping light and fluffy, compatible and avoid having to include the Out house sink....to me much preferred...something I do much more often than I used to. Perfect example is you are asking me how many packages there are available with slackware.
In answer to that you can browse with gftp thier repository plus for multimedia and similar there is slacky.eu
My experience is I use debs or pets/sfs (??? yes there are well built packages around puppy and often the neatest solutions) and the rest of the time I build. I have a saying ...'It's all linux'
I do it semi manually. slaptget never worked for me... don't think it works too well for others. The structure and core might be solid but they have a 'slack' approach to packages... often broken , so I avoid when I can... as you say 'go figure'
My tests of slax 7 showed that the situation had not changed..some major breakages. So resorting to the big boys is not always the perfect solution it may seem. Do note Tomas spends most of the build time bug fixing the slackware he uses for slax.
Rough estimate... kernel is puppy, boot wrappers and system wrappers ..puppy. Configs..puppy. Core binaries...mixed bag..often older varieties odd in house built. Rest of user space -the distro its 'based' on with exceptions such as gparted.. Puppy 2 was not claimed to be any particular distro but its core binaries appeared to be from slackware...puppy 4... hard to say..perhaps the same.
There was a 'what is puppy' thread started...curious question of how its defined officially and unofficially. My initial finger pointed to the wrappers that give it its structure. I suppose that would come from the slax experience as that pretty much sums it up ... a few kernel adjustments to suit the live linux/union but the rest is slackware.
This distro was officially a free for all, it now tries to be structured.... there is some identity crises going on... this forum is not strictly speaking a puppy forum but stuff happens. The botany bay of the Linux world. There is an old saying...'don't ask why, it just is'..ah ha... perhaps that is the definition of puppy.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
A plan?...God likes is when we plan...it makes him laugh...
I am full of these this morning
adieu
mike