I think a couple of very big somethings have been missed in the Puppy/Austrumi comparison. Austrumi has a full Apache server, VSFTP, and also an Xmail server, complete with a gui interface for setting up Xmail. I think this is the main reason that there's fewer apps in it, as it's a major undertaking to cram in all of that plus php and perl. Austrumi is NOT targeted at newbies, and so the developer felt that leaving out a few things was fine. Drives can be mounted and unmounted in a terminal using the mount and umount commands. Also, when I needed a text editor in austrumi I just used Abiword. It slices and dices but along with other things it's pretty good at editing text. I have to admit that I'd like to see Leafpad in it, however.
The other interesting thing is that Austrumi's developer feels that it's only fair for it's users to learn a little Latvian, so much of the documentation has not been translated into English.
Basically here is my take-
Puppy-
Beginner freindly
Many useful apps right out of the box
Better package management than almost any other distro
Great documentation
The best forum anywhere
Faster than you will ever really need
Stable enough for everyday use
Truly innovative
Austrumi-
Can be setup as an extremely small full blown web server
Has a nice look(as if I cared anyway)
Small selection of applications
NO PACKAGE MANAGEMENT
Very little support
Poor documentation
Questionable stability, or so I've heard
I'll take Puppy hands down. However, I'll still be watching Austrumi closely. I'm also going to take a look at Pocket Linux, sounds kind of interesting.