Two people from Curly Cloud were searching for a lightweight desktop solution on which to base their products. The requirements were that it be secure, light weight, and include a fully functional web suite. While there are a few distributions of Linux that came close, none had the universal desktop focus that was a primary requirement.
The desktop solution also must be easily customizable in case we wanted to switch the theme. The third requirement was stability.
This led to the selection of Debian as the distribution, with their live-build system. The Debian distribution of Linux is known not only for its stability but also for its tiered packaging system which allows the person selecting the packages to decide the release version of each package individually.
One of the key decisions that allowed this Live-CD to play on such low powered machines was the choice of LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. This low impact Development environment allows the inclusion of specific items from other packages without carrying the extra weight of the entire software suite.
We couldn't find exactly what we were looking for in a lightweight distribution, so we made our own that is geared toward web usage.
The project is called ButtonOS, and you can check out the ButtonOS project and open source code at: ButtonOS.org
-- Signed: Ryan and Joe of Curly Cloud