(Suggestion) Improve readability using a different color scheme
Issue
It seemed to me that the current timeline image carries "too much" info, with line color that varies too much between neighbouring line, making it hard to read.
Suggestion
I'd suggest changing the line color of a distro to stay close to the color of its origin. e.g. distros that roots from debian uses the same "red-ish" color like red, orange, yellow, which should make it much easier to read.
Potential Implementation
Use a mix of the root color and the current color to generate the image. e.g. for S.U.S.E with current color of #4bb679 and parent of Slackware, which have a color of #000000, we can use a mix of 90% Slackware color, and 10% S.U.S.E color.
Additionally we may need to use some LAB color space blending or whatever method perceptually better than just linear mixing to make sure it look decent. This approach is intended to indicate where the distro rooted from, and also indicates that the distro is different from its root/parent.