Let's make your life easier. You're just beginning with Puppy Linux; maybe any Linux. Woof is an application that enables the creation of Puppys almost 'from scratch'. You wouldn't have to compile the 'nuts & bolts' and the pieces they hold together: but you do have to know how Puppys use them and decide which to use. So, unless you are willing to put in the time to fully understand how Puppys can work; the alternatives; and how to work with the not-intuitive Woof application, cross mastering Woof off your high-priority list.
bigpup has provided an overview of the differences between Full and Frugal Installs; a Live install merely being a Frugal install to a USB-Stick. Take a look at the graphic on this post: viewtopic.php?p=41084#p41084. Each of the files ending with ".sfs" is a file-system. sfs is an acronym for 'squashed file system'. Squashed means compressed. Each can hold thousands of files. On boot-up, without decompressing those SFSes, a frugal puppy copies those files into RAM where they are cached*. A 'Full Install' decompresses those files and writes them to a Linux Formatted partition only on your hard-drive.
Not only do 'Full Installs' lack some of the capabilities of a Frugal install, they are almost impossible to fix if you screw up. So for now, forget about Full Installs.
The purpose of Remastering is take an already existent Puppy, modify the suite of applications that are to be immediately available, and package that product so that it can be distributed and almost immediately provide an alternate operating system for a computer. If all the foregoing are not your objectives, then you really don’t need to a Full remaster. It is likely that your objectives is simpler, and more easily accomplished.
REMASTERING is primarily concerned with altering the contents of the puppy_version_number.sfs: removing, updating and/or adding to them. In the above referred to graphic, the file named puppy_bionicpup64_8.0.sfs is that Puppy's puppy_version_number.sfs. Fossapup64's is named puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs.
There is a much better tool for remastering than the 'built-in': It's named nicOS-Auto-Base-Remaster. You can download the package from here, viewtopic.php?p=12983#p12983 and unzip it: Right-Click and select UExtract. Also Right-Click the file in the extraction folder and select Properties. Make sure there's a check-mark in each of the boxes under "Exec". But don't left-click it yet. Move it to /root/my-applications/bin: Left-press, drag, select move. After you create a SaveFile/Folder it will be there waiting to be run by Left-Clicking.
On your first shut-down/Reboot you'll be asked if your want to create a Save. A
Save will hold your settings, customization and the applications you install. Menu>Setup>Puppy Package Manager can be used to both install and uninstall. It can also uninstall any pet or deb you download and install by Left-Clicking. [Fossapup64 can make use of many applications packed as an SFS, an AppImage or a portable which don’t have to be installed; and don’t have to be included in a Remaster].
What a Remaster does is combine the contents of the puppy_version_number.sfs with those in your Save, assigning the contents of the Save priority if there’s a conflict. Of all the Remaster applications of which I am aware, nicOS-Auto-Base-Remaster is the only one which doesn't require that you copy the setting and configuration files from current system to the folder being used in building the Remaster, and know which files to copy. The resulting Remaster may not have the correct settings for a different computer: but it won’t be any worse than the default setting would have been.
nicOS-Auto-Base-Remaster does not create a new ISO. But once you’ve substituted your new puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs for the original you can use the nicOS-Remaster-Alternative to quickly produce a ‘Full’ remaster packaged as an ISO. [Used on its own, that application does require you to copy setting and configuration files to the ‘Work Folder’]. I don’t know if the ISO it creates will have boot-system files satisfactory for UEFI computers. The built-in remaster application doesn’t.
Creating a package which includes files necessary to create a boot-loader are only needed for computers which don’t already have a boot-loader capable of booting Puppys. A Puppy’s system files can be just copied, or packaged and the package copied, if the computer already has the capability of booting Puppys.
Don’t be too quick to remaster. Get to know your Puppy, its capabilities, available applications and tools Puppys have for creating customizations other than remastering. To paraphrase a passage from Robert Ruark's Uhuru:
Be certain that you have something better before you replace a system.
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* Puppys are very efficient about caching. For example, viewtopic.php?t=692&sid=7b2ae880552d2cc ... 3aad9ba63f. My estimation is that a file it caches requires about 1/5 the space in cache in RAM that was required by the file on storage leaving the rest of RAM for actual use. Files are swapped in and out of 'cache' as needed; and that swap is, for all intents and purposes, instantaneous.
