I'm not sure the things you find missing are Ubuntu's fault. For example, while it's true that there is no ifconfig by default in Ubuntu (it's provided by a package called net-tools), one can read this:

> In 2009, Red Hat decided to deprecate ifconfig as the default command line network interface management utility, because the “net-tools” package (which provides ifconfig) did not support InfiniBand addresses (commonly used interconnect in high-performance computing applications).

So, many of the things that make Ubuntu look like a new OS to you, were actually decisions made by RedHat years ago, and they will also be present in newer RHEL versions.