I think Linus was incredibly polite and helpful, I certainly wouldn't have been anything like as tolerant. I had barely got into the original article before muttering "What about the scheduler & preemption, you idiot" to myself. Anyone with any sort of OS background has all the points that Linus made drummed in them from the get-go, it's a shame the author apparently didn't do any even basic background reading. All the stuff Linus patiently explained has been well-understood for literally decades. Old farts myself often bemoan the fact that fewer and fewer people seem to understand how computers actually work. It's bad enough that the author didn't understand the consequences of what he was doing, what's really depressing is that so many other people thought he actually had a point :-(