Linux users want phones with comfortable infrastructure that is hackable, and known, and richly powerful, with a wide base of people generating creative contributions. Linux isn't popular (with the hip crowd) because merely because it's better (though it is), or because it's hackable (though it is) Linux is popular because it's a rich technical ecosystem with robust layers of technology operating together but each modifiable, lovingly adopted by power users, each opting in to trying to improve themselves & their systems.
You can recreate the "ability to make modifications" (although you'll struggle to come to anywhere near the seriously integrated layers of technology Linux environments so robustly build). You can offer "Freedom and transparency" to be able to tinker. But it's the co-participation with other tinkerers, with many venerable but separate & adjustable/hackable layers, that makes Linux so rifely diverse & compelling.
In short, my strong belief is: people want Linux phones. The technical ecosystem is more interesting as a whole than any array of boxes/capabilities one might tick.
You can recreate the "ability to make modifications" (although you'll struggle to come to anywhere near the seriously integrated layers of technology Linux environments so robustly build). You can offer "Freedom and transparency" to be able to tinker. But it's the co-participation with other tinkerers, with many venerable but separate & adjustable/hackable layers, that makes Linux so rifely diverse & compelling.
In short, my strong belief is: people want Linux phones. The technical ecosystem is more interesting as a whole than any array of boxes/capabilities one might tick.