In the standard/stock GCC, stack protector is off by default. However, some Linux distributions have patched GCC to turn it on by default. In my opinion, this is rather harmful, as it breaks the ability to compile anything that’s not linked against the standard userspace libraries unless the Makefile specifically disables stack protector. It would even break the Linux kernel build except that the distributions with this hack added additional hacks to GCC to detect that the kernel is being built and disable it.
