I decided to look at both Remix OS and Phoenix OS. Test equipment consisted of two laptops -- my Dell e4310 and my mother's Win7 (
) HP tc4400.
Remix OS would not boot at all on the HP, and it barely ran on the Dell... any time I clicked there was a roughly one-second 'freeze' (cursor unresponsive) as the machine contemplated its directed action.
Oddly, Phoenix OS must be a little lower-resource, because that's how it behaved on the (much wimpier) HP! Haven't tested it on the Dell yet. Phoenix OS 'felt' friendlier, too -- don't know offhand how to put that any better or more clearly, sorry.
I must say, the version of WPS Office that comes with Phoenix OS is, er, a bit more aligned with a tablet or large smartphone than with desktop anything... but I'll take what I can get, you know? Solving that, and adding in a real Google Play Store (I'm pretty sure Phoenix OS doesn't have that yet) would be the only two improvements I'd immediately suggest.
On a qualitative scale, from "get this **** outta here" to "best thing since sliced bread" I'd rate Phoenix OS a solid "not bad". Remix OS needs a little work, I dunno about that one.
Neither is a Puppy replacement, to put it mildly -- too much of a resource hog, and even though both are 32bit, I'm told they need a 64bit CPU (?!) -- but give Phoenix OS a year or two, and it might be something relevant in everyday conversation. I suppose we'll see...