I think the community could solve most of the problems if they wanted to, yes. Actually, I think if you could find and organize all the people who really want an open source desktop and have congruent goals towards a personal computer OS that embraces simplicity, consistency, and user empowerment, it could happen without having to deal with the mainstream Linux Desktop community. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anywhere for these people to find each other, no project to rally behind, no community to engage with.