DARK HORSE LINUX
A General Purpose Linux Operating System
PARENT LEAF STATUS
Not based on another distribution
Free From Controlling Interests
While still providing the full Linux/GNU environment you are accustomed to, such as SystemD, glibc, GCC -- Dark Horse Linux is not based on another Linux distribution, and so is not beholden to any upstream projects' influence in any capacity -- because no such project exists.
Derivative distributions inherit their upstream's technical decisions, political stances, and corporate entanglements. When an upstream distribution makes controversial changes, adopts questionable policies, or bends to sponsor pressure, downstream projects must either accept those changes or expend significant effort to diverge -- often creating maintenance burdens that compound over time.
As a parent leaf distribution, Dark Horse Linux makes its own technical decisions based solely on what serves its users and the project's goals. There is no upstream to appease, no corporate sponsor dictating direction, and no inherited baggage from another project's compromises.
This independence comes at a cost -- building a distribution from scratch requires substantially more effort than rebasing on existing work. That cost is accepted as the price of autonomy.
Still Standards Compliant
Dark Horse Linux is FHS 3.0 and LSB 5 compliant, and intends to implement FIPS 140-3 compliance.
Other relevant standards will be added as the project matures.
Peership Status
Parent leaf status places Dark Horse Linux on equal footing with other independent distributions that are built from scratch rather than derived from existing projects.
This puts DHLP in the company of distributions such as Slackware, Gentoo, Arch Linux, Void Linux, Alpine Linux, and NixOS -- each of which stands on its own foundation rather than inheriting from another distribution.
By contrast, many popular distributions are derivatives: Ubuntu is based on Debian, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu, Manjaro is based on Arch, and Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux are based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These projects, however capable, inherit the decisions of their upstream.
When Debian adopted systemd, Ubuntu and its derivatives followed. When Ubuntu integrated Amazon search into the desktop, downstream distributions had to actively remove it. When Red Hat converted CentOS from a stable RHEL rebuild into the rolling CentOS Stream, entire ecosystems of users were left scrambling. Derivative distributions are subject to their upstream's whims -- parent distributions like Dark Horse Linux are not.
