I don't think it's Puppy's size that's solely responsible for missing support for some WiFi adapters.
It's super easy to misconfigure the kernel when you build it, and accidentally drop a WiFi driver or two, or get a faulty fdrv with missing firmware. We have bugs in kernel-kit (for example: at least at some point, it didn't stop with an error when firmware download failed), although it's true that the situation is getting better with time.
In addition, people in the Puppy community keep building more and more kernels, of different versions, and sometimes they don't go over the configuration copied over from an older kernel version, option by option. Some new drivers are left in the default setting that excludes them from the build. It's hard to pick a kernel version and build a configuration file that doesn't exclude anything useful.
The main reasoning behind the automated periodic kernel-kit runs in https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... el-kit.yml is to allow us to improve the kernel configuration files over time (i.e. add driver x when someone asks for it in the forums) and avoid regressions (like forgetting to add driver x when upgrading to a newer kernel branch).
Another solution to problematic WiFi support is https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/2457: a kernel very similar to that of another distro, which is almost guaranteed to work if WiFi works in that other distro. If you look at the numbers, they're not super bad: this "big" kernel that kinda goes against Puppy tradition, is only slightly bigger than the Fossapup64 9.5 kernel.