Phantom Linux was born in the first years of the new millennium. In all this time, it matured and somewhat shifted focus.

Its first incarnation was Gentoo based. Then it shifted to Slitaz, Debian, and Antix, to finally end up with Arch. Before Arch, it was a secure distribution very similar to Tails. It featured total disk encryption, complete invisibility and anonymization on the network, access to the dark web, Softether VPN, etc. It was later realized that having an encrypted filesystem is not always the best choice, unless you live in a very unfriendly environment. If something goes wrong with the hard disk, basically you lose all your data.

Phantom OS was never published and only used in small circles, until it was reborn as an Arch distribution. At this point, usability became the prominent consideration and a compromise was made to ensure a good degree of safety, but also easiness of operation.

The idea to model Phantom OS after other popular operating systems came from some Youtube videos describing some degree of customization. After all, it was possible to allow people to use the same environment they are familiar with, in the process of migrating to Linux. Soon the new incarnation of Phantom OS was born.

If you wonder why the name “phantom” was chosen, there may be many explanations. One of the nicknames of its original author is “phantom”. It may also be a tribute to the Phantom of the Opera by Abdrew Lloyd Webber. Or it may just underline its ubiquitous nature. Indeed, it is there. But is it there? Or is it Arch Linux? Windows? A Mac? Or something else?