My experience has not been that the systemd device names are "actively worse". The biggest problem I've had is changing around VMs where subtle shifts in PCIe I

My experience has not been that the systemd device names are "actively worse". The biggest problem I've had is changing around VMs where subtle shifts in PCIe IDs (specifically subdevices) end up changing changing names. Meanwhile, consistent-net.rules seems like a hack, always in the back of your mind as an arbitrary stateful part of the system. Why should I think of my primary network device as eth2 if there is no reason for it to be eth2 other than merely being the order on the first install? But if you prefer consistent-net.rules, then more power to you. I'm guessing most of your frustrations could have been addressed by systemd having some shame about changing functionality out from under users, and providing an up-front option to switch between the different methods.