Re: Distros: The Gourmet Food Of GNU/Linux

On Sun, 9 Aug 2026 07:00:35 +0500, Stanislav N. aka pztrn wrote:

> 
> You just said that Arch is a pile of garbage. That means you hate it somehow.
> 

Arch is just another mainstream distro and ALL mainstream distros
are garbage. 

Furthermore, "hate" is the inappropriate term.  I have a professional
and rational detestation for such mainstream distros.

> 
> I was using Gentoo for so long and love it too, despite on fact that
> I either build GENERIC_DISTRO_NAME kernel by using all drivers as modules
> OR compile drivers within kernel.
> 

You have the option to build the kernel yourself, independent of the
Gentoo tree and thereby avoid all such issues.

The fault is entirely YOURS, and not with Gentoo.


>
> But after some time I realized that I have work to do, not to recompile
> whole world because GCC upgrade. 
> 

???????????

There is no reason to recompile world due to a GCC update.

You are totally mistaken.

>
> Arch is great if you want vanilla software (almost, with MUCH FEWER patches
> applied than in any other distro) but do not want to hassle with compilation.
> 

Let us examine the distributed Arch "bash" program, which is located here:

<https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/bash/>

Let us use the "checksec" utility to examine how it was built in terms of
"security" features:

<https://github.com/slimm609/checksec>


Here is the checksec output:

RELRO       Stack Canary  CFI          NX          PIE          RPATH     RUNPATH     Symbols     SafeStack           Stack Clash  W^X Seg  Selfrando     Sanitizers  FORTIFY Lvl  GLIBCXX Assert  FORTIFY  Fortified  Fortifiable  Name
Full RELRO  Canary Found  SHSTK & IBT  NX enabled  PIE Enabled  No RPATH  No RUNPATH  No Symbols  No SafeStack Found  No Probes    Enabled  No Selfrando  None        Unknown      Unknown         Yes      12         17           ./bash


In stark contrast, here is the checksec output on my customized Gentoo
bash:

RELRO     Stack Canary     CFI                NX          PIE           RPATH     RUNPATH     Symbols     SafeStack           Stack Clash  W^X Seg  Selfrando     Sanitizers  FORTIFY Lvl  GLIBCXX Assert  FORTIFY  Fortified  Fortifiable  Name
No RELRO  No Canary Found  NO SHSTK & NO IBT  NX enabled  PIE Disabled  No RPATH  No RUNPATH  No Symbols  No SafeStack Found  No Probes    Enabled  No Selfrando  None        Unknown      Unknown         No       0          12           /bin/bash


Notice the extreme difference.  The "RELRO," "Stack Canary," "CFI,"
"PIE," and "Fortify" fields are enabled in Arch but disabled in my
custom Gentoo build.  This is an extremely significant difference
and it indicates that Arch is garbage and junk.