Fedora keeps sendmail — for now

it's nowhere near as difficult as you are pretending it is.

it's far easier to tell your MTA *once only* "my smarthost is there", than to have to configure the same information in every program that needs it - and then to re-configure them all when you change ISP or mail provider. or when you realise you need to handle work mail differently to personal mail.

> However, many Linux distributions are trying to optimize for
> user-friendliness these days,

the mistake you and your ilk are maing is assuming that "user-friendly" equals "crippled and dumbed-down". it's the same mistake microsoft made in the 80s...that apple managed to avoid until the late 90s.

if you want a system like that, there are several available - you don't need to turn linux into a clone of mac or windows. OS X is actually a pretty good system.

really, if you hate unix or linux that much, why do you even try to use it? use something else that suits your needs better instead of trying to ruin the things about linux that make it good.