1) that's a bit confusing (to my noob eyes) - doesn't at least one of them stand out as being extremely fast, compact, and a no-brainer to install and configure? (ok, referring to your last sentence, would your ubuntu-based one be your top entry as a candidate?)
2) that's pretty standard for just about every live cd distro out there.
3) very nice - nice decision - easier customization I hear, and still get speed.
4) ok, good... how do they fare for auto-detect and auto-config of you wifi, wifi with encryption, webcam, and mm codecs, for example?
5) not really space for two... some of the eeePC netbooks, for example, only have 4GB SSD... filling up two thirds of it with program code doesn't give you a good ratio of programs versus data space in your storage. Programs should be no more than 1/4... here they are 3/4 on such a setup. Yes, I realize what setup I outlined as an example, but I'd like this thread to help as many users as possible, and there is a large base out there of machines with 4GB SSDs.

Take note that I do appreciate your posts very much - you seem very eager to help and already contribute quite a bit to the community. Hats off to you!

It looks good on paper (or on screen rather, in these modern times), however it refuses to work from usb stick (scans for CDROMS at a certain point and boot script halts at that point). I'll see if help is forthcoming in a language other than Latvian, and if yes, I'll try it out.

EDIT: I exchanged a few messages with them, and they basically gave me lots of justification as to why they do it that way, that it's not for modern PCs, that it's (bla bla bla) - I didn't hear anything to the effect that they'll fix this ridiculous coding of specifically searching for a CD instead of just using a path or allowing for other devices like USB sticks. If this is any indication of the rest of the distro, I'd stay away! (developer's attitude and viewpoint is a grand telltale sign in the Linux world).

Hi. 1st time poster using jolicloud 1.0 on a 4GB eeepc. I like the minimalistic style of joli's app desktop... However, I'd like to include a few shortcuts/links to some installed applications on the cloud desktop, but I can't seem to work out how to do this? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

This is NOT the thread for that. Go down in the left tabs, there will be a place to edit your menu. In there you can add and remove items.

so Timmi whats up with your search?

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After tiring of testing everything under the sun, I put Peppermint back onto my netbook.
Their menu is hard to modify, if you install obmenu it doesn't show in their menus, as some other apps don't as well. And I'm a bit puzzled about the fact that they slipped a for-profit, commercial application into the menus (last.fm which you have to subscribe to). And a beginner can't remove it or change the menus for that matter. If at least they'd be open about it, and say they get kickbacks to help fund the project, but when I raised the question they called me a troll, asked me if I wanted a fight, banned me from their forums. For this reason my search is on - I can't afford to be without a support community and don't want to be worrying about hurting fascist moderators' feelings.

I'm hoping that TinyMe 2010 gets re-released soon. Scrolling in a browser (both Chrome, and even Firefox on occasion) would make the netbook reboot at times and the developer said he'd gotten too many reports that things work in Unity but not in TinyMe that he is starting over from scratch. It seemed very nice, very promising - I hope they get things sorted out.
On paper, it is an amazing distro... the footprint is tiny (about 100MB iso), and nothing is missing. Kind of like Puppy in size, but a more modern, current interface, and wifi and other stuff works better out of the box than the other tiny distros. Openbox is fast and configurable (contrary to peppermint where things are more static).

1. which runs fastest?
2. please forgive the comment, but distros that fit into 3GB are what... about 90+% of distros out there?
3. with the onslaught of openbox, is fluxbox still current? why do you like it, why do you recommend it? as a noob this has been a question-mark for me.
4. that's real good. but how is hardware support for the new stuff... like power management, screen brightness controls, webcam, sound, clock scaling, wifi card autodetection and wifi with wpa, etc.

Manual install had been a dealbreaker for me... if you consider I've tried dozens and dozens of distros, as a beginner I wouldn't have been able to try them and wouldn't have been able to stay with Linux up to here - also, I meant the thread to be useful to many others, including other noobs looking for such a distro.

As an update on a previous question of yours, on my main Laptop (core2duo), I went back to Mint Gnome after a stint with Mint LXDE. I really missed the menus, forethought in the way things work (like how easy it is to put something into the Favorite apps menu, to make something load on system startup, etc), and a few items were buggy - because I rely on it for my softphone and other apps, reliability is a primary concern.

On my netbook, after a stint with Peppermint (which share some similar characteristics with Mint LXDE), I discovered that Puppeee has reached 1.0 stable status, and I have just installed it onto the eeePC netbook. That doesn't mean I want us to stop looking and discussing, as this is a most interesting thread, that I am sure, many to come will appreciate.

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hey Timmi

1) Well, I would say the new "Mini" is fastest overall but it has very little and is for usb
or hdd install into tight places, requires 700MB to install
However; I think the full Slackware version is the best (3rd one down here )
http://multidistro.com/NFLUXNEW/SQ4/slack.html

2) Fluxbox is better than Openbox to me
in terms of usability, and function
easily updateable menu,etc
The Fluxbox in my distros is not regular Fluxbox

3) the kernel, firmware, etc in all my distros is "bleeding edge" for the most part
No other Slackware/ARCH livecd thats installable has better as they both have the Zen Kernel
and is 2.6.34
http://zen-kernel.org/

EDIT:
and Timmi when I say "manual-install" its just copy/paste into terminal the commands to
copy the livecd filesystem to hdd
it's very easy and gives you full control of the install process
you format the partition, copy the filesystem in ram to hdd, then setup lilo or grub

You might want to try Puppy Linux? I haven't run it on any laptops, only in VirtualBox sofar, but it seems to contain most standard applications "out of the box" and is fairly easy to install. Puppy 5.1 (latest) also has access to all software from Ubuntu so you should be able to find what you need.

The preinstalled applications are more lightweight than the standard (e.g. AbiWord instead of OpenOffice, lightweight browser etc.), but can with Ubuntu repositories you can still get the regular software.

Not sure which desktop manager it uses, but it is lightweight (i.e. not Gnome or KDE).

It uses JWM as far as I know (Jim's or John's or something like that Window Manager LOL), As I mentioned, I have Puppy on the netbook now. See Puppeee.com for more information. Puppy is ugly as hell, with much too overcrowded menus, but real fast and gets the job done with very little resources. The next Puppeee (and Fluppy for other netbooks) will be based on 5.1 also, but in my experience, using generic Puppy doesn't have all the hardware support down pat - wifi, WPA, webcam, etc. I haven't tried 5.1 though. With puppeee/fluppy, at least you know Jemimah already racked her brains over it all, and you have a product that will just work. BTW, having access to the Ubuntu repository doesn't mean that everything for ubuntu will work fine on Puppy, and apparently it doesn't, according to an expert.

@Linus72
Fast is nice, but after using Peppermint and then LinuxMint-LXDE I've come to hate Openbox, and it sent me running back to Linux-Mint-Gnome (on my core2duo laptop). I'm glad to learn that Fluxbox is more configurable, and that you've added some improvements to it. I'll have to give your distros a try sometime (but I still feel that manual install isn't for me). Is it THAT much work, for an expert, to write an install script so any beginner can use it? You make it sound like it would be real easy and not complex at all. I do have an appreciation for how much work it all is - maybe you could get a sidekick or two to give you a hand with your distro.

Timmi
regarding the "manual-install", which is in /usr/doc of the slackware version and /usr/share/doc in the ARCH version
here's the manual-install for slackware version
http://multidistro.com/NFLUXNEW/SQ4/manual-install

as you can see, I just do the mkfs.ext3 the partition, mkdir /target, mount the
partition on /target, then copy/paste the cp and mkdir commands into terminal
make the chroot and chroot in and setup lilo or grub

takes about 10min to install if using the biggest version 632mb
and about 5min for the mini
and I usually use Lilo, but would recommend grub(legacy) for a single os system

make sure to also setup /etc/fstab, /etc/lilo.conf, and /etc/mtab, and /boot/grub/menu.lst if
using grub legacy

I recommend the full version also as the mini doesn't have sbopkg, any ability to compile (make, gcc, etc)
and has very few apps.

regarding a installer; I'm certainly not an expert, my Bash is pretty rough, the install
script I have is sourced from slack-mini-server and it works great, but at the end you
only have the choice of installing lilo, to mbr
so its limited

I dont wanna mess up anyones pc so I dont mess with it yet
and the manual install is very easy anyway and just as fast

Wow! it looks like you've already got your script written... now all you have to do is fiddle with it a bit and make it an actual install script. ;-p

Timmi: Does your netbook have an SSD or an HDD? If it has the former, then you could build Chromium OS, write it to a USB flash drive and install it to your ASUS Eee PC.

@Linux72: Allow me to quote you directly from the thead where you speak of your distros:
This thread (in my original intentions anyways) was in the hopes of identifying one, or some, very good distro that is low in resource requirements, and is stable. A real distro, being maintained.

I can definitely see the advantages of going with your nFlux distros:
*get the fast Fluxbox
*not have to change base distributions (as you offer it in 3 popular colors)
*have less bloat because you use one app per task

So I am by no means "shooting you down". Unstable is outside the scope of this thread, and unsuitable in our criteria. (For you see, there are hundreds and hundreds of unstable distros out there, yours isn't the only one, and we'd never finish here if we sidestepped to venture there.

And I'd like to make it clear to all, who have come to this thread seeking the same as has been pointed out from the moment this thread was created, that "stability" and with maintance continue to be among the primary criteria in this thread's distro search.

When we're all done, we'll have a webpage, with a domain name (already reserved), outlining our search here, and about twice a year, featuring one star distro as the recommended one.

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well, to me none of them are "unstable"
I haven't had one breakage or any issues in any of them
I have 6 slackware -current installs, 4 arch testing installs, 5 debian sid installs and
3 maverick meerkat installs with 0 problems.

in contrast Fedora 13,etc should be called "unstable"
as its haywire most of the time.

but, if you want stability I understand using lenny/squeeze,etc

I actually do everything I can to "break" them to see if they are unstable
it just hasn't happened