I hear you both...
Completely agree..
As far as the disparate linux distros go...
It is easy to make a spin off distro..
Maintaining it so it is stable...for years...decades...is another matter...
It takes a dedicated team for that.
And so the upstarts invariably fail...
Or really good upstarts that fall...end up becoming the basis for new distro(s) ...Bunsen labs for example...or arch crunch...spun from crunch bang ...which was one of my favourite distros ...that fell..
In main part to the fact...that the creator was still holding on and maintaining it himself...
And just couldn't do it all anymore..
Some distros though ...SHOULD fail...
Such as the Hannah Montana distro..

And yea...
Some apps work better on some mobile plats than others...

Eventually...with the work being done...
A beast will be created that will overwhelm the big corps though...
With UT , Plasma, SFOS, etc...
All of them running headlong toward the inevitable ..
Eventually everyone being able to run everyone else's apps on their platform...including android apps..and maemo apps...
It will make for a chimeric os beast ...
The first os to manage it...will take a big lead...
But the others will follow...
And it will end up changing everything we know and live with...about boundary and limit ..

And once that happens...the alternate mobile os world as we know it is going to be a whole different landscape...
After that disruptive time occurs.
And that time is upon us now...
It is less than years away...it is a year...possibly months...
Then all hell is going to be breaking loose...
I don't know how android or iPhone are going to compete against the titan SFOSMaemoDebianUTDroidPM(etc) Kaiju
I think it will be the beginning of an epic power struggle battle as android and iPhone start losing end users to the amalgamated behemoth.

For us...it will just be a choice with all that can be accessed...
What skin to use...what de ...what wm....