His 1st bullet point says it all. Ken Thompson said the same thing about Linux in an interview years ago. He said that is Linux's major problem.
I find preoccupation with some company's metaphor to be a sign of lack of creativity. And the people behind Linux distributions are obsessed with Microsoft and the "desktop".
The "desktop" is only one metaphor.
Does iOS have a "desktop"?
To speed up Vista when it was first released, I used to disable the desktop in Windows by changing the registry key that specifies "explorer.exe". I would just boot to msconfig or task manager.
The system ran much faster that way. Applications can still be minimised. It worked so well, I never went back to the aero nonsense.
Obsession with a "desktop", and trying to look like Microsoft's version of it, is one of Linux's major flaws.