Whew - that spoutathon was 10 or 15 years ago. I had put together a 1-hour talk and just before going on stage, I learn that I’ve got 18 minutes. So, I did what I learned in grad school: talk fast and don’t give ‘em a standing target...
Just because it's not bloated doesn't make it any less of an OS then any other minimal Linux installation, it is itself built on the Linux kernel - it is just highly optimised for a very select set of software and hardware requirements.