Yeah, the reality is that Linux is a gigantic mess, especially with corporations trying to all pull it in different directions, and all the big distributions being bad. Also, having individual components made by frequently incompetent people is bad enough, but having a Frankenstein's OS of separate components being made by multiple separate incompetent groups, that really magnifies the issue.

Anyway, I think Gentoo is good in concept, but shit in practice (especially with software being as bad as it is, and taking forever to compile). Rolling-release plus source-based is just the worst possible combination. Compiling your system once or twice a year is fine. Doing it all the time, though, huge pain in the ass. I have never used Crux, but I hear it's fixed-release and source-based (also old and apparently does things in a pretty Slackware way). That makes more sense to me. Also, seems like it has a ports collection, like BSD, which is another thing I like about it.

If I wanted to go full source... I'd probably go with BSD, actually. You generally shouldn't mix ports and packages (not sure if it's still the case on OpenBSD, especially when I checked and their ports collection does build and install packages that are like any other and I never had issues doing that with Emacs and a couple other programs, but the FreeBSD people do say this), but going full source-based on the BSDs is as viable as using packages. On the Linux side, it's only Crux and some even more niche distributions.

Maybe Nix and Guix, I think they support installing from source as well, but I think they are too complex to be worth it, especially when apparently they do not solve the updooter issue at all (so, I don't know if there is a solution... maybe appimages, but that's only on Linux, and FreeBSD through Linux compatibility, which is not as efficient as running natively). Guix's other features are interesting, but it's all done with Guile, and I heard that causes a bit of a noticeable performance hit (maybe they should have just used CL). Also, as nice as being able to configure everything with Scheme is, it kills portability, you can never move that config to another distribution or OS.

I would like an illegal open source version of Windows XP, with backdoors and vulnerabilities patched. Where are the Russians when we need them?