I totally feel like I'm making my own unique character by choosing predetermined paths on a tree.
As opposed to just levelling a pre-determined list of skills to 100? That's just a stick. At least trees have multiple branches. As I said, I do miss attributes, but the perk system does allow for a great deal of customization. There are 251 perks in the game. Without using the "Legendary" skill reset, there's a soft level cap at around 80. While it isn't technically impossible to earn every perk in the game, it would never happen in the normal course of gameplay.
No, it is not the exact same thing. If you want to change anything about your class in Morrowind, you have to use enableclassmenu which can be very glitchy.
You know that raising miscellaneous skills is an option, right?
Miscellaneous skills do not level as quickly as major and minor skills. My skill progression would be stunted arbitrarily. You'll also never level up if you only increase miscellaneous skills. I would only be able to progress if I kept levelling my hunter skills, which wouldn't make sense. I would also be forever stuck with the label of my former class, and labels aren't PC.
If by "bad at everything" you mean "everything is viable", then yes.
Yeah, everything is potentially viable. You're still bad at almost everything in the beginning.