I'm not trying to be ornery, I just don't understand what is ugly about Linux, or what is specifically ugly about using Linux on these systems?
The problem, as I understand it, is that Broadcomm _refuses_ to supply a hardware manual for their SoC/peripherals...so nobody is willing to take on the challenge of developing a BSP for the Pi.
Linux wins by default.
Aside: One company did do a primative port, but here's their statement about it: "This is a very primitive BSP presently but capability can be expanded (to some degree) per user needs. Due to the lack of hardware manual from Broadcom, I heard no one wanted to develop QNX BSP for Raspberry Pi. Our Vietnamese engineer friends have gone through incredibly hard development without any hardware manual. They had to reverse engineer hardware spec from reference code. Now Broadcom and Avago merged we will see what happens to the documentation situation. "
And that's assuming you can boot the damn thing without magic incantations and smearing lamb's blood on the correct pins of the SoC.
The RasPi fixed those problems, though.
But it's work in progress.