I’ve compiled a list of community-driven, non-corporate FOSS operating systems. What I mean by “community-driven” is distributions that are self-governed, where decisions regarding the direction of the distribution are ultimately made by the community itself and its leadership. This is in contrast to distributions where corporations like IBM/Red Hat, Canonical, and Novell have decision-making power over the direction of the distribution.
Native ZFS support. LLVM compiler and runtime. Jails, Bhyve, ports tree contains a wide variety of packages. Firm monolithic coupling between kernel and userland.
Features Guix functional package manager, a Guile Scheme implementation of the Nix package manager. Uses Guile Scheme for declarative system configuration. 100% libre.
Built from the ground up using the Portage package manager. Packages are traditionally compiled locally from source, but the project now offers binary packages.
Oldest Linux distribution still maintained since 1993. Aims for design stability and simplicity. Makes few as possible modifications to upstream packages. No automatic dependency resolution of packages.
Anonymity and privacy focused distribution. Connects to the internet exclusively through Tor. Designed to be booted as a live DVD or USB and never writes to the hard drive. Leaves no digital footprint by default.
Alpine Linux-based distribution for phones. Aims to extend the life of consumer electronics by supporting older devices that are victims of planned obsolescence.