Well, this story leads to the opposite of the thread subject, but I guess it is worth telling you. I have installed three Linux servers, same distro (not saying which one here, I don't want a pure flame!) in three different releases. Same configuration, same programs, but three different way to get OpenLDAP working on all the machines. Moreover, the official distro guide is broken for one of the version I installed.
So I guess Linux flexibility can turn into mess very easily.