as you know I used to maintain a small light derivativeI'm here as long as distro size matters,
because of the RAM (so even the old clunkers would work )and the standard complex method needed to remove pre installed packages
cleanly was a pain to sort out
and by you sticking to 214 X you see the need for this too
so yes an over all size of the iso is important
the build system and package management that I use allows you to remove pre installed packages and allows for an easy way to build the distro
note all the packages are going to get recompiled anyway whatever base Glib is used but my method dosent depend on woof or unleashed so you dont need to unravel that or modify it
basically just a text list of packages to be used or point it to a folder of packages
and a simple one line command cant get easier than that
thats the automatic way
there is also a GUI for the manual way with check boxes
for me now building with packages is the easier part
the part that takes the time is building all the packages
I have dragNdrop scripts to speed up the process
this is a method not a distro
the kernel makes the OS the packages make the distro
creative people make it happen in real time
Joe