The root problem with install difficulties, network config difficulties, and divergent opinions about how to lay out an emacs install is simply that unix user space and unix "best" practices for source management haven't much improved for almost two decades.Having worked with Unix and Unix-like installations for more than two decades, I can only say that you are utterly wrong.
And in fact, it is mostly the driving force of the _free_ Unix variants that has brought forward most advances in source management, package management, and network configurations.
If you want to get nostalgic at least over configuration, try Slackware one of these days. I think it is still pretty much old-spirit.