If you want a bare-bones OS you can build from the ground up with the better third-party tools available today while retaining virtually full backwards compatibility with 9x-era software, I'd say POSReady 2009's what you're looking for, and as a former WinFLP user, I tell you I've never looked back.

4 things that stand out about this OS:

1. Fully customizable installation allowing you opt out pretty much everything in the OS.
2. Still supported my MS (updates will continue to roll out regularly till 2019).
3. Boots and shuts down faster than anything else in the XP line, and that on default settings.
4. The only important missing feature would be the compatibility tab, which can be easily transplanted back from a regular WinXP CD (slayerxp.dll)

If you also plan to use it as your everyday rig, which thing I'm currently doing (and boy does it work great), there's a number things you ought to be mindful of, but I won't go into details because you probably won't anyways.

DosDaddy wrote on 2018-05-02, 03:59:

If you want a bare-bones OS you can build from the ground up with the better third-party tools available today while retaining v […]
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If you want a bare-bones OS you can build from the ground up with the better third-party tools available today while retaining virtually full backwards compatibility with 9x-era software, I'd say POSReady 2009's what you're looking for, and as a former WinFLP user, I tell you I've never looked back.

4 things that stand out about this OS:

1. Fully customizable installation allowing you opt out pretty much everything in the OS.
2. Still supported my MS (updates will continue to roll out regularly till 2019).
3. Boots and shuts down faster than anything else in the XP line, and that on default settings.
4. The only important missing feature would be the compatibility tab, which can be easily transplanted back from a regular WinXP CD (slayerxp.dll)

If you also plan to use it as your everyday rig, which thing I'm currently doing (and boy does it work great), there's a number things you ought to be mindful of, but I won't go into details because you probably won't anyways.

Very interesting. Other threads have suggested that WinFLP was hard to customize vs standard XP, especially after install. Is POSREADY 2009 simpler for customization?