Linux distros offer a lower-case "app store", a "garden", while also allowing you to straddle the line between the garden and the outside. On the same device, at your own discretion. They don't make it any more difficult than it has to be.

iOS is a "walled garden" because it requires you to be in or out. Like you say, you can "pick Linux", but that's not tearing down walls. That's just leaving the walled area.

The frustration with Apple isn't the fact that they're forcing anybody to use their stuff. It's that they make a lot of cool stuff, and then they go out of their way to make it difficult to use anything not Apple-sanctioned on their stuff. Most OSes don't do this. I like the Linux distro approach better: Provide a garden, but also allow the installation of stuff from other gardens, or from the wilds.

I don't know why you're being derisive of people who have only "their own initial choice to blame". I choose to live in the city where I live, and that has downsides. I even knew those downsides going in! But that doesn't mean I have no right to complain about the downsides. Maybe the upsides still make it worth it to me, and I'm just pushing for a world where I can have those while also fixing what I think is wrong with the place.