[ackalker]

Ergo: use a distribution like Arch Linux or Gentoo. Arch Linux has the advantage that you don't have to build everything from source yourself. Both have the advantage that the build scripts are easy to understand (Arch PKGBUILDs more so, IMHO).

In the end you will always arrive at a chicken and egg situation, you will ultimately need to trust the engineers who designed your CPU and chipset, the VLSI design software which they used, the developers who wrote the compiler and toolchain, the tools used to bootstrap it, external libraries, etc.

The world ultimately runs on trust, no matter how you slice it.