Author here. Good point, but 50 hours seems like an outlier for sure: I'm no expert whatsoever when it comes to debugging hardware in Linux. Assuming setup time across all first-time builds is Poisson-distributed, feels like the peak of that curve is more like 2-3 hours. Certainly something to keep in mind if considering doing it, though.
Thoughts:
* If I was setting up multiple identical machines, I'd only need to solve the issue once.
* Details matter: Switching from VGA to HDMI connector made a world of difference. Me not noticing that earlier cost me ~2 days of trial-and-error to go to waste.