Absolutely. This is exactly the kind of specialized work that would involve such customizations. I think it's fair to say, however, that your experiences lie well outside the general context of this tangent

I believe most module insertion can be forced. The naming safeguard is just that, a safeguard. At a binary level, there should be no problem with linking them.

Other than this, I think that the basis of our disagreement over whether linux is 'fragmened' or not, hinges on where we view such patches influence on the core linux architecture. In contrast with the radical forking of kernels during the 'Unix Wars' of old, fundamentally fragmenting those platforms, I would argue that the discrepencies between modern distros do not qualify as 'fragmenting' linux.

Clearly your technical understanding of linux is at an expert level, so we could surely kick around the finest points of kernel architecture - but I'm pretty sure we would have left the terrestrial atmosphere of general-purpose distros (vis-a-vis conventional user concerns) far behind

Dude, US cryptology is the greatest... we lead the world!
Implementation not so good though.

Your anecdote apparently has nothing to do with cryptology but more to do with why don't we use the dang stuff in the first place.
We outsourced everything else in those dang wars why not data transmission?
You could bet your buttox It would have been secure if google had handled it. </rant>

***
Back on topic, sort of.

The problem with consumer devices is the dang consumers... there are too many of them. In order to deliver an acceptable device for the majority of consumers, a whole lot of compromises have to be made.

We will see it in the next firmware, finite development resources had to be divided up among priorties... some of these will have nothing to do with actual device limitations that could be overcome. A good deal of resources may have been spent on making an existing "bell" ring louder, or a new whistle sound sweeter.

I don't want the N900 to be a consumer device. I don't even wish for Harmattan to be a consumer device if compromises have to be made to make it so easy to use "a cave man could do it". (<That last bit was borrowed from a popular US ad campaign and not meant to be derogatory against any particular user group, cough; iPhone... cough, cough. )

Actually now that we've gotten into it I'm not exactly sure we have a disagreement. I have stated several times that I don't linux has much of this problem currently. I have said that it had this problem in the past and that it contributed to it's hindrance in being ready for the desktop world. This has pretty much been resolved.

What US manufacturers?