It's not that they "made" their language have no side-effects, it's more that they made a choice to use a lisp/functional design for the language which gives the advantages of that family of languages languages... advantages like limited side-effects and formal approaches for proving "correctness" of programs. It's a really clever design choice IMO for a smart-contracts language.
My main job is web development and I'm not using Linux on the Desktop for any political/ideological reasons, I'm using it because it gives me the best experience.
Desktop Linux for me is Ubuntu 18.04 on a ThinkPad T450s and it's currently my favourite daily driver (we have a 2019 MacBook Air at home I share with my partner and a Windows 10 machine for testing websites at work). I can't think of the last time I had any problem getting anything to just work - the T series ThinkPads are well known to work with Linux so YMMV with other brands/models but I just happen to love the ThinkPad form factor and design so I'm super happy.
It sucks now having the Adobe CC suite available on my primary work machine but more and more we are using Figma for any digital design related workflows and it's wonderful.
Regarding Apple laptops, I was holding onto a 2015 MacBook Air until I upgraded it for the 2019 model because it was meant to be the latest-best Air... MacOS, iCloud integration and the keyboard has been disappointing to say the least.
I've been using Ubuntu LTS versions since 12.04 on Thinkpad T and X series laptops and I'm a very happy camper - out of the box Ubuntu doesn't suck for me, it "just works". I moved from OS X on latest Apple laptops to make my daily job (interaction design + web development) more productive (e.g. workstation running the same OS as servers, tooling etc) but now it's my preferred OS + hardware combo from a end-user perspective. I have to switch back to an Apple machine for testing and pairing with co-workers at least once a week and between the new Apple laptop keyboard, the random reboots (awaking from sleep), shitty web font rendering and intermittent errors relating to Apple ID, I don't miss it. I really loved OS X quite a few years ago but between the latest hardware (don't get me started about cords/dongles needed for a 2018 Macbook Air) and growing list of OS X quirks I'm always happy to return to Ubuntu 18.04 on my Thinkpad T450s.
I think many of the points raised in the article affect people making desktop software for Linux rather than end-users of desktop Linux. It seems like a global list of issues for the entire desktop Linux ecosystem - which is totally valid but I think a more accurate title of the article might be "Why developing desktop software on Linux sucks" or "Why creating a desktop Linux distribution sucks" because I think my desktop Linux setup rocks!
Points to a senior speech-writer. Someone who has written speeches for both Pence and POTUS - but probably more speeches for Pence... might be an op-ed directed by Mattis but my money is on the speech-writer going rogue.
I moved from OS X to Ubuntu running on Thinkpads as my main work machine around the Ubuntu 12.04 era... haven't looked back. I have an 11" Macbook Air as a backup/home machine and I think Canonical have closed the gap in terms of polish and stability. If you stick with well supported hardware (Thinkpad T and X series in my experience) you can't go wrong.