Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is so much truth to what you say. I used Linux exclusively from January 2000 until April 2012. A lot has changed in that time, but out of all the changes the three I'm most thankful for are: (1) Xorg replacing XFree86 and making video "just work" (2) Pulse Audio replacing OSS and making audio "just work" (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of col…
The thing is, you used to be able to fix something and have it stay fixed. You used to be able to find a config that worked - which, sure, might have required some manual experimentation and customization - but then you could back it up and keep it. Maybe pulseaudio and systemd only breaks 2% of the time rather than 3% of the time. But when they do break, you can't understand what's happened and you can't fix them, a…
No, I used to patch bash scripts, patch the deb package, deploy to prod, then have to do it all over again when the init script changed upstream in the distribution. Now I just have my configuration management change the options I need in the unit file and never touch it again, so now I sleep while unattended-upgrades works for me.