I can spend hours comparing the FreeBSD ports mechanism to the APT/DEB and YUM/RPM combos and, how can one neglect to mention Gentoo and portage and Emerge?
Packaging and configuration management is an interesting topic and it is fascinating to review and analyze the various takes OSs have on that.
In the comparison respect, I enjoy referring to this document:
http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~talon/freebsdports.html
It is very educational in general but also makes some interesting comparisons.

I too, like the .*BSDs, though I am a Linux person by nature and preference. I would not call Linux chaotic but rather, flexible. But that’s an argument as old as time

The .*BSDs take the much more classical UNIX approach of perfectly matching the user space [LIBC, utils, etc] to the kernel one, an approach Linux does not really share so religiously. There are, I feel, advantages to each approach in general and kernel in specific..

Since you mentioned YUM I’d like to recommend yum-merge-conf: Yum plugin to merge configuration changes when installing packages.
I find it very useful myself.

Also, in my opinion, Debian’s APT/dpkg is better than YUM/RPM, perhaps you will also like it better, worth a try.