I'd rather have an imperfect solution that works, than not have it at all (unless the solution is a really horrible and ugly hack).

Which is the Linux approach, dressed up in the "release early" argument. However, as PHK pointed out, this leads to a situation where adequate but inelegant code persists in the kernel, because it's "just about good enough". And the net result is a morass of hacks and kludges, and a culture where one sub-par implementation is just replaced with another without pausing to design a decent solution.