I like the level of control and ease of reproducible setup that I have on my desktop, and find my (Android) phone frustrating to use in part because it lacks it.

It's not without trying either, I've worked on and off on a terraform provider for Android - currently apps only but with some vague intention to try to manage as much of settings as possible (not much, AIUI). It's just not meant to be used like that though, of course, and I wish Linux was a viable enough option that, at least among nerds already using Linux for work if nothing else, it didn't need to be justified for use on phones.

> Linux doesn't have good answers for the proprietary goodies

It doesn't need to. The feasible short-term target is feature parity with de-googled AOSP roms, which would still make it plenty useful in a "daily driver" scenario.