[benbenolson]

Oh, for some reason I read that bit as "the Linux kernel non-consensually personalizes." You're right, though: it's definitely referring to userspace libraries, not the kernel itself. And yes, you can still easily avoid GNOME, Unity, and anything else you don't want to use: Openbox, i3, dmenu, and countless other window managers and GUI applications exist and work perfectly well (as they did a decade ago). That plethora of choice makes "Linux" nearly immune to the effect that the author's talking about.

[abrambleninja]

In general I agree with you about the ability to customize Linux, but the author could be referring to systemd, which (from what I've seen) has been the target of many complaints about being too central and hard to replace, especially with how it is required by so many projects in the Linux ecosystem (from distros like Debian and Arch to DEs like GNOME).

[topaz0]

On the other hand, it is extremely configurable, whatever else you might think about it.