It’s estimated his loose lips sank 10 ships and killed 800 servicemen.
Unrelated, he was convicted of accepting bribes as a Congressman. He gave a lucrative contact to a company with no experience producing munitions, then opened a lumber business and sold that same munitions company excessively expensive crates as the way to receive his kickback. The reason is came to light was because the munitions company produced defective artillery shells that prematurely exploded and killed at least 38 soldiers. Served 9 months before Truman pardoned him.
I ran Gentoo for several years. It wasn’t Linux From Scratch but it did required a lot of manual work. It also had great documentation. It forced you to learn all of the pieces encompassing the entire OS.
Arch seems to be the modern equivalent.