I won't dismiss that he's been successful, but he's one of the people that I dislike the most in the tech industry. If GNU stuff didn't exist, he probably wouldn't even be able to compile and run his own work back in '91. All of the success of Linux is because there was a userland in search of a kernel. And if it wasn't for thousands of guys coding up drivers for Linux, Torvalds would probably end up an embedded guy in a washing-machine company.
GNU has been crucial to the flourishment of community-developed software today, both with their effort in creating the tooling, and their effort in keeping it accessible and liberated. So, the Linux guys need to learn to say thank you, because it's for GNU that there is a Linux for which development they get paid and feed their families.
After all, who cares about a kernel, as a user? For me, currently, if it supports the ath5k driver, and runs Emacs and supports POSIX, it's OK. I switched to FreeBSD, and, well, I didn't really notice anything.
It's too bad that it don't focus a bit more on the ideological philosophy of GNU, even if, as far as I know, Torvalds don't care much about it.
Especially for those who would like or dislike the ideology: those who disagree or for whom it don't make a sufficient reason to use it could get away from it, those who don't know could be attracted.
In my personal experience, the ideological aspect is 90% of why I use GNU and Linux, and when I see all the people running a GNU/Linux desktop inside or outside the tech communities, I don't really agree with the idea that it "never became a significant presence on mainstream desktops". It does became mainstream for people with specific uses for various reasons (political, technical, ethical, etc.). For sure, it never became mainstream in supermarkets.
