Since the new millenium began, it seems that there has been a proliferation of Debian-based distros. Some of these are commercial offerings such as Libranet, Lindows and Xandros, while others such as Knoppix and Morphix are freebies. MEPIS seems to fall between the cracks, being free but offering low-cost support. Free or not, all of the above start by taking Debian and expanding on it -- in other words, Debian with some extra trimmings.

However, there is one distro that takes the opposite approach. Bonzai is a free slimmed-down version of Debian Woody, designed to fit on a miniature 180MB CD. To be fair, Bonzai does add features, though these are subtle improvements such a more up-to-date kernel than the standard Woody, a more up-to-date KDE, plus a few other tweaks. Bonzai is in fact an improved version of Debian's netinst CD. This is a minimalist approach, designed to get Debian quickly up and running on your network. Once you have a basic Debian install, you can then grab thousands of packages which are available from Debian mirrors on the Internet.

Travel writer and Debian zealot Robert Storey recently grabbed a copy of Bonzai and spent a weekend with it, putting it through its paces (and putting aside other distractions such as eating and sleeping). The morning after, a slightly disheveled Robert shares his impressions.