NimbleX: A lightweight-ish distro with it's own, easy-to-use build system. Development seems to have stagnated, though (currently advertising "NimbleX 2010 beta is out!")
Pardus: really good KDE implementation, one of the easiest to use out the box since Mint, and an ambiguous legacy- nobody really knows where it's descended from, rumor is that it was initially based on Gentoo. My only complaint is that it has separate live and installation discs.
NimbleX is pretty cool, and has it's own build service so you can add whatever you want while creating the iso.
Pardus is really well done, and probably one of the most beginner-friendly distros I've seen, allowing the user to choose the menu layout, themes and wallpapers on first boot. It's unique, and not derived the main distro families, although I've heard it was rooted in Gentoo. The only drawback is that it has separate iso images for installation and the live CD.
With regards to the goal of having Python be PID 1, here are some resources that may help u/joshiemoore:
Maybe a hybrid of the two could be used? Perhaps use MicroPython in the kernel to start full-blown Python as PID 1, which executes an init system made from Python scripts like what Pardus does.