It appears that you think that I'm holding contradictory opinions. It's possible.

The "ICT aware" population is not what I'm concerned about and whilst that likely excludes both of us, it's the retired widow who needs a phone to track her diary and call an ambulance, it's the pig farmer who uses 123456789 as their email password and uses internet banking to pay his employees, it's the impatient mother of three who is running between venues to get her kids to drama, soccer and music lessons.

I have made house calls to these actual people and hundreds more who do not, will not, cannot, read warnings. They simply don't have the context to understand their severity. They don't understand why a camera has no requirement to read your address book or connect to the internet. They don't understand what a calculator needs to keep your screen on, or not. They "don't have anything to hide" and have no understanding how their address book and diary can be used to defraud them of their life savings.

I've spent a lifetime educating people like this. It's a drop in the ocean and all that happens is I'm pissing in the wind getting wet.

Is locking down Android helpful for you and I, perhaps not. But if I don't get a phonecall in the middle of the night because one of my clients just lost their life savings because their phone got "hacked", I'm a happy little vegimite.

Linux isn't ready for prime time because novice users have no chance to just do simple stuff like plug in a phone, download a video and tweak it, let alone open a spreadsheet or make a Christmas card and print it out.

You and I can do this, my partner cannot.

Another way to look at this is a 30 year academic with Mac and Windows experience who cannot figure out how to migrate to Linux.