Never liked using dnsmasq. Always felt like too much in one tool. A local caching resolver, dhcp server, and tftp/pxe boot setup were always things I preferred to configure separately.
DHCP and DNS are connected, PXE requires DHCP entries, so to do a simple setup you'd need to glue together at least 3 daemons otherwise, all with different config syntax
10/10, no regrets, would recommend.
Is that the Linux way you are on about? No obviously not 8)
I think you mean the "unix idealized but never really happened exactly but we are quite close if you squint a bit ... way" where each tool does one job well and the pipeline takes up the slack.