suggestion for light/small live cd/usb

looking for replacement, I won't mention the cd outta respect. Is great but updating is very hard, specially on fly... Hoping for a suggestion of replacement... Looking for a fairly small cd/usb (maybee 200-300), would be easily updated: perhaps debian based, and not heavy on resources as that is my pet peeve. Also looking to have a few apps "added on" or already installed; pidgin/firefox (fairly recent)/xchat/vlc/xmms and/or iPod compatible. Would like; burning, image viewer, irssi/elinks/finch and a few simple things like that. I'd prefer xfce over some other window managers but enlightenment is great too. Obviously it would be a real nice thing to use this on a usb key as well since I keep one with me at all times.

To put in nutshell looking for a take with me, general use linux that can be updated on fly... I luv xubuntu but is too big for that os AND my stuff on same usb key... Are there lite versions made out there, or are there other packages that I can safely get rid of besides unwanted, localization and gimp? I'm not all that unfamiliar with linux but I don't pretend that I know enough to cut the size down to half without making it unstable...


Please help out,
I'd appreciate it
Thanks

Have a look at puppylinux ,lots of different spins, try a few......


Home Page | Puppy Linux

Slax is a personal favourite of mine. It has a module based approach so you can add in extra applications. It is very small yet has a full KDE desktop, though it used to have IceWM so hopefully it still does. It is very fast too. It can run from USB or CD and can be fully live or run in a persistant mode that will remember changes.

Slax: your pocket operating system

My only problem with slax is slackware. Don't get me wrong.. I used it for a bit, but the dependency hell is not worth the cleaness, simplicity and nature of slackware. it's a bit hard to work out anyways without it being on a cd. Slax itself is also great cause it's almost as good having those modules; but since new version, new system there are alot less modules now and none for xchat, pidgin and thunderbird atm.
Surprisingly; even with kde it's still small and easy to load, gotta give the creator snaps at making it pretty easy otherwise to use slackware

Edit: being said i may go to slax once modules go back
need to look at puppy too. didn't know about these other versions b4

I have been using lots of puplets, , so far macpup is my fav. Most of then are under 180 mb and run completely in ram.You can install to a 1 gb usb flash drive.You can get em with opera, xine,xmms and even compiz.