> (My suspicion is that once the problem is well understand, the solution in many cases might be "build a real development community around open Android code" rather than "try to shoehorn KDE/GNOME/Unity/$FLAVOR_OF_WEEK onto devices." But I could be wrong about that.)
And my suspicion is that you are right in your understanding.
I have another suspicion though, and that is that current Android devices are getting powerful enough, to satisfy the computing needs of a great deal of users. Which means that given the plugability to suitable input/output devices (screen, keyboard, mice,...), the Android device is all you'll need, a lot/most of the time. And this could be a full Linux desktop distro running on it. I think the Motorola Atrix showed the way in this respect, and I hope it will be furthered.