PCLinuxOS is a LiveCD with installer that is the creation of Texstar, easily one of the better developers out there in the Linux world.  His vision and goals have allowed for the creation of a very solid and easy to use distro.  Recently a desire for a small footprint version has been regularly expressed on the PCLinuxOS Forums, and there have been several re-masters made by members/users of PCLinuxOS.  In the end, Texstar decided to put his own twist on it, and MiniME was born.  
From the website:


So, how does MiniME Measure up?
Read on!

Installation:

As MiniME is a LiveCD, the install is done from the active desktop.  An icon marked, of all things, "Install PCLinuxOS".  This starts up a easy to use installer that walks you through partitioning your drive if needed, and than setting up how you want to use them.  You are than given the last chance to back out and than off it goes.  The install itself is quite fast, less than 10 minutes on my computer.  Once completed, the root password is set, a user created, and the bootloader installed.  All very quick easy and efficient.


First Boot:

The first thing one notices about  MiniME is it's speed.  This thing is fast!  Even when running from the CD.  From there, I quickly realized why, there is damn near nothing here! Only the very basics to start and run KDE.  Now please don't take this as a being a bad thing, the intent here is to give you the base to build exactly what you want, the way you want it, and that is exactly what MiniME does.  
The theme is easy on the eyes, a beautiful field scene with a nasty looking storm off in the distance, a transparent toolbar and a small set of icons.  
Screenshots Baby!
The most important part of all of this is easily the one marked "Synaptic".  Synaptic is PCLinux's software installation and  maintenance program.  It is a well reliable interface to Apt-Get, the core of Debian's application  maintenance.  In this case, Apt-Get has been ported to use RPM packages with a great deal of success.  From Synaptic, one can download and install a huge variety of programs, as of this writing there are 5025 packages listed in the repository.  No small feat for one man and a small collection of trusted packagers.


What it has:

Only the basics.
Konqueror is the only web browser, there are a handful of programing tools, Aumix, Synaptic, the  amazing PCLinuxOS Control Center and not much else.  But again, it's more than enough to get you rolling in whatever direction you want your computer to go.  
I need to touch on the PCLinuxOS Control Center.  This is the heart and soul of this distro.  It provides easy to use configuration tools for nearly anything that one needs to adjust.  From setting up your bootloader to configuring your printer or firewall, it's all here and it all works.


What it has not:

Well, obviously, a lot.  There is no default e-mail program, no office suite and no games are installed.  But of course, all of this is very easily fixed via Synaptic.


Usage:

Once installed, the speed continues to be amazing.  This is one fast distro!  It took some time for me to work my way through Synaptic and determine what I need, want and want to try. Once I had picked a load of programs to get, I clicked apply and went for lunch.  I came back to a finished screen, and a more fully loaded computer.  With the simple task of a few clicks I now have Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Nvu and a full boat of programs that I use regularly.  From there, I set up the taskbar and links the way I like them, imported my e-mail data and browser bookmarks and I was off!  What, you don't like Firefox?  How about Opera, Flock, Dillo, Epiphany or SeaMonkey.  The same goes for e-mail, Evolution, Kmail, Mozilla-Mail, Pine and Sylphyeed are all here for the taking.  This is often the case for any program type you may need, most, if not all of the major Linux choices are here and are as easy as a few clicks away.
I can tell you that as I have installed more programs, the speed has decreased some, which is to be expected, but not a huge amount.  Stability continues to be exceptional, and I have had no serious problems.  I have had a few odditys, I have yet to get the monitor power off to work, it only goes into screensaver mode.  This may be as simple as a package I have missed, as it does work just fine with my PCLinux 0.92 install.  I also experienced some instabiliity with SuperKaramba, but I am not convinced it is MiniME's fault, an upgrade to LiquidWeather seems to have fixed this.


Conclusions:

There has been some question on the PCLinux forums about whether MiniME is a good Distro for the new user.  My feeling is it really depends on the user.  If you are seriously new to Linux, and really have no idea where to begin and have never used anything but Internet Explorer, there is not enough here to make you feel comfortable, and I would stick with the full PCLinuxOS 0.92 (0.93 to be released soon).  If you don't mind the idea of having to pick and chose programs as you need them, go for it! Installing only what you want and not having the mass of programs that nearly all Distros come with is quite interesting, and a bit enlightening as you go.  On this, one of the challenges at times is figuring out exactly what to install.  As mentioned above, I use SuperKaramba, which is not installed by default on MiniME, but is on 0.92.  So I went looking for it in Synaptic.  Nothing found under S, so I searched for SuperKaramba, nope, not found, OK, how about Karamba, still nothing.  I searched for Widget, the term for what SuperKaramba uses, lots of hits, but no SuperKaramba.  At that point I paid a quick visit to the forums, and found that SuperKaramba is part of the KDEUtils package, which makes no note of it being there. Armed with that bit of info, I was then able to install it and have it up and running in no time.
 
PCLinuxOS, simply put, is one of the easiest to use, stable, consistent, and enjoyable distros out there.  I honestly feel that it has few equals at this point in time.
MiniME proves to be no exception, just smaller.