Stopping at the first machine code instruction in GDB

Starting with GDB 8.1, there's a special command for this: starti. Example GDB session:

$ gdb /bin/true
Reading symbols from /bin/true...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
(gdb) starti
Starting program: /bin/true 

Program stopped.
0xf7fdd800 in _start () from /lib/ld-linux.so.2
(gdb) x/5i $pc
=> 0xf7fdd800 <_start>: mov    eax,esp
   0xf7fdd802 <_start+2>:       call   0xf7fe2160 <_dl_start>
   0xf7fdd807 <_dl_start_user>: mov    edi,eax
   0xf7fdd809 <_dl_start_user+2>:       call   0xf7fdd7f0
   0xf7fdd80e <_dl_start_user+7>:       add    ebx,0x1f7e6

The info files command might give you an address you can break on:

(gdb) info files
    ...
    Entry point: 0x80000000
    ...
(gdb) break *0x80000000
(gdb) run