I would like to put a shout out for these guys who have made a very small Debian distro called Debian Dog it is very Puppy like and is excellent as a usb install.
I have tried it and it is beautifully made and uses synaptic for packages.
You can get it here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=93225
"DebianDog is very small Debian Wheezy Live CD shaped to look like Puppy and act like Puppy.
Debian structure and Debian behaviour are untouched and Debian documentation is 100% valid for DebianDog.
You have access to all debian repositories using apt-get or synaptic.
To test DebianDog for first time you need to burn it on CD or to extract /live folder on top of a partition or USB and edit manual your boot grub menu.lst For the moment DebianDog has installer for USB grub4dos frugal install.
DebianDog is set to autologin as root. If you like to use it as multiuser system it is recommended to start XDM login manager. Just type in terminal xdm-start and reboot. xdm-stop will reverse back autologin as root. "