From: "John Stoffel" <john@stoffel.org>
An urge to 'Let's tinker' is both a good and bad thing for a SysAdmin to have.
Did he say he was a studly-cap SysAdmin? I missed that. I took him to be talking about his own computer. If there aren't too many users paying the bills, then the Linux Way is to tinker.
... I don't think you're going to find one that makes you happy.
Maybe not one distribution, but maybe one or another package manager will look good. Learn to build your own package. I am not too familiar with all of them, but RPM builds packages from pristine source and then you can install from the package without the source, but you can always get the source version. The package is at its core a way to keep track of what you did to build it. You start Linux from Scratch, but when it comes time to put it on new hardware, you don't start over from scratch.
The urge to cleanup is nice, but counter productive unless your on an embedded device which can't handle all the excess libraries.
I will refrain from waxing on making and cleaning of messes, bloat, and the cause of all our grievances. The more package builders had Alexander's attitude the fewer SysAdmins would have Alexander's problem.
It's not an easy battle to solve.
< Insert here a classical quote. Don Quixote? Henry IV? Sun Tze?> -- Keith