[pandeiro]

In my case messing around with conf files improved my understanding of those specific components (acpi, xkb, alsa, modprobe, etc) and the system. By your logic what learning experience isn't a waste?

I feel you on pulseaudio though. Been there, done that, pacman -Rcs gnome gnome-extra. That took me minutes, not weeks. Because I had already learned to configure alsa, and knew it worked fine.

The overall point is people without time to learn probably shouldn't use complex systems? OK.