On a modern Linux system, Gnu is the command line userland, one compiler (among many, and not the dominant one for work if you're a Java shop), and Emacs. And that's it. Not X, not really Gnome, not KDE at all, not the polish put on by Ubuntu etc, and not most of the OS underpinnings either nowadays (dbus, hal, udev, upstart, dpkg, network-manager...).
Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kernel name?
Thank you! I think many of the more recent Linux users will spend the entire day without once using a GNU tool, except indirectly. And, of course, you could say the kernel and most of the tools were compiled with GCC, but that's not something to be proud of--that just means Linux is full of GCC-idiocy and potentially breaks every time there's a minor upgrade in GCC.
Also GCC's days as the dominant C compiler may be numbered - clang is catching up, and they are even trying to get it to compile the Linux kernel http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=4068
This doesn't really address your main point, but GNOME is part of the GNU project. Which means that most of the both the GUI and command-line UI on e.g. Ubuntu is in fact GNU software. But obviously less so under KDE.
Well, can you name some examples of programs you think GNU really maintains? It has always been an umbrella project, they haven't employed any developers for over a decade now.
While Emacs, GCC and coreutils are more historically "GNU" than say GNOME the vast majority of GNU projects almost from the very beginning has been donated code or projects that otherwise fell under the GNU umbrella.
Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kernel name?