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I am ambivalent. I see the value in what you're saying, and we owe so much to the ad-hoc accumulation of what we now call the gnu toolset.

On the other hand, a system that has been designed coherently is much nicer to use.

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I think this might be the crux of my discomfort with the OP's exhortation we should all adhere to his preferences. Unix and it's derivatives are great because there's a long history of people trying to do things, finding it hard and then slathering on a layer of functionality which is invoked through abstractions that are novel and probably inconsistent with those abstractions that came before. You don't need to ask anyone's permission and you won't find people saying "meh. you shouldn't do it that way." (okay. maybe a few, but you can ignore them. The Unix(tm) police won't show up to cart you away like what happens with VMS.)

But the flip side of this is, yes, cruft.

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