RHEL's docs are simply unparalleled in the Linux world. I only wish search was better, but if required I can download them and use my own search anyways.
I don’t know, for a pet server this might not be as dumb an idea as it sounds (though without automatic updates, obviously). Perhaps with aconfmgr[1]?
I haven’t done it in anger, but over seven years of running Arch on a personal server I’ve had a total of three instances of breakage: upstream strongSwan systemd integration change[2] (when using a config format they’ve considered deprecated for years), upstream nftables parsing bug[3] (I knew in advance that nftables is for adventurous people), and upstream Kea config format change[4] (and, well, Kea really bloody sucks—suggestions for anything else that can do DHCPv6 PD welcome). All of those resulted in the relevant service failing to work at all and would’ve been caught by a reasonable staging environment. My (Arch) GNOME desktop broke much more frequently during that time.
[1] https://github.com/CyberShadow/aconfmgr
[2] https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/Changel..., first item
[3] https://git.netfilter.org/nftables/commit/?id=638af0ceb2b223...
[4] https://kb.isc.org/docs/en/upgrading-to-kea-16, third item