I never managed a straightforward Puppy installation because after installation
it did not boot up. Maybe I did not know there what options to choose for
installing Grub. I managed only frugal installs.
Yes, under Ubuntu I have used lots of windowmanagers and desktop environments,
in most cases I preferred E17 and FVWM-Crystal, sometimes I went back to Gnome,
sometimes I used XFCE.
In Dreamlinux both XFCE and Gnome are very fast. Faster than under Ubuntu.
Yesterday I wiped out the Windows 2000 installation on which I experimented
for one day and got both pleasant and unpleasant surprises.
Right now, again, I have Ubuntu on my machine, on another hard drive.
sites.google.com/.../snapshots-with-installing-ubuntu-l\
ucid-lynx-on-my-pc