I think it's safe to say a lot of people in tech have the same knee jerk reaction (I know I do), but sadly what are the open alternatives? Closest I can think

I think it's safe to say a lot of people in tech have the same knee jerk reaction (I know I do), but sadly what are the open alternatives? Closest I can think of would be Android, but you're throwing a lot of flexibility and openness out already. I had high hopes that FxOS would grow into the {reasonably hackable, consumer pricing, works out of the box if needed, higher abstraction (eg. don't make me think about my kernel) system APIs} market. Right now, to have any degree of control beyond "here's a GUI with the 5 settings we thought you'd need", you need to use way too much relatively advanced knowledge (setting a 'nix ARM system up, hardware quality, commitment to maintaining your setup at a fairly low level) for it to be widespread. I guess I'm asking the smart people on here why can't we have a tablet ecosystem more akin to the mid/high end desktop market? (Emphasis on modularity, _standards_ and interoperability) Do the actors in that area reckon there's not enough interest/commercial opportunities in contrast to the OEM/OS siloing? Or is there a project out there I should start throwing contributions at? ((EDIT: please don't say Canonical: the GUI is nonstarter because of limited resources, and if you're using server editions then we're back to the original low-level problem in this case))