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

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.