I have a different view on the alien Linux.
When I assembled
145 systems to boot there were 39 countries contributing to the distros.
Out of the 145 systems only 44 were originated from USA.
I believe all of them can be traced back to Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Mandrake and Genntoo families but others like Slax, Knoppix, Ubuntu etc would regard themselves of having their own families.
The main driving force in Linux appears to be the Europeans, judging from the current 3 most popular downloads from distrowatch.com In term of popularity the Americam Red Hat (or distros based on it) is perhaps the most popular worldwide as it is well established in Japan and China.
Linux is truly international. That is possibly one of the few interest in life where we can share with everybodye from different country. Thus there is no alien in Linux.
If you can't read a desktop in a lanuguage from Nepal (Nepalinux) or Thai (Linux TXE) but able to change the language and keyboard settings back to English to operate it normally do you still treat it as alien?