While I generally agree with the author that the userland monoculture isn't helpful for portability, that argument belies the fact that most people I've worked with _want_ those extra features that GNU gives them. I started using Linux and IRIX around the same time - but I actually didn't really "understand" the difference, because someone had gone out of their way to install the GNU userland.

That's something the article leaves out: while GNU and Linux are many times seen as a unit, there's a rich history of installing the GNU tools on other Unixes, because of the extra functionality they offer.

There is, of course, the argument against portability. At my last job, as the only Linux user on my team, I more than once wrote shell scripts that only worked for me - as soon as someone on macOS ran them, they'd run into a missing feature on `sed`, or a different calling convention on `date`. Which is why, at my current job, I'm very begrudgingly a macOS user - it makes me a better coworker.