I've never seen utilizing advancing tools as "cheating", but I can understand why purists might scoff at it. You should always be running checks and making sure everything is legit before deployment anyway, so I have a hard time seeing it as anything but Autopilot+.

I have utilized Debian and Minimum Ubuntu as an alternative to Centos with reasonably pleasurable results

I do also like Absolute for crafting the perfect lightweight install, but it's kind of a pain in the ass.

The NCD Oracles foresaw the demise of the Eastern Bear to be true.

And so it was.