I agree that the details of what happens when you have UID 0 inside a chroot environment vary from system to system. Essentially, problem is that you have an unstoppable force (root) up against an immovable object (chroot), and the results of these situations are always tricky...
For all other UIDs, though, behavior is consistent between systems. The URL you mention agrees with this, and my experience agrees with this. As long as you code carefully, know its limits, and are not UID 0, chroot does what it says it will, and is no more of a "clever hack" than any other system call.