But having tried out Docker for some production deployments, I think that it (or some less goofy successor) is the way forward. You get a sealed box with all the necessary dependencies, and the box has just enough holes poked in it that you can connect up the bits you care about. It turns apps into appliances, not things you need expert craftspeople to lovingly install.
As much as I have enjoyed 25 years of doing everything on an OS whose conceptual model is a 70s university department minicomputer, this era is coming to a close. We already know it's a poor match for existing hardware and use cases because we now mostly run it in virtual servers. But "virtual server" is the new "horseless carriage". It's a phrase that tells us we are living in a future we don't yet fully understand.