I guess the discussion is a bit heated because distros keep breaking stuff that worked 10 years ago.

It would be fine if overall reliability increased, but it does not. I could write more reliable shell scripts for making WiFi or PPP connections than NetworkManager, which sometimes required a reboot before graciously allowing to connect again. Never happens on the command line.

Thank you for describing the status quo, I'll probably look into Slackware or OpenBSD now.