I've been using various UNIXes and clones since the 90s so I do generally know what's going on but I also have no desire to fill my brain with the syntax to the new new new commands to configure an Ethernet interface on Linux etc, or the work necessary to understand fully why VA-API on a certain chip has specific quirks that break freerdp, nor the toil of backporting and patching the necessary libraries, or the specific dance required to set up a machine to TFTP new firmware onto one of the switches, or.... You get the idea.

I'm also not a fan of all the complexity of Kubernetes, one directory with simple to read files makes it a lot more transparent what's where and how it's set up, and the commit history + changelogs make it relatively clear what's changing and why. No distributed database or fancy bootstrapping, just a ubiquitous config format and tool to apply. Changes at the granularity of "a new host is available at A.B.C.D, configure it as a dev server" or "add a new Debian system container named 'blah' to X, bridge it to the research network only, limit to 16 hyperthreads / 64 gb ram, set up for development on git://<whatever>". It works ok for now.

The next major change will be when models that run locally are capable enough to drive the config changes themselves.