I'm not sure if you're still around Sacha, but recommending Garrett Birkel's "The Command Line in 2004" in 2005 is so quaint and adorable in 2021! You're link is also broken. Try http://www.garote.bdmonkeys...
Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" novel, also published in 1999, brilliantly predicts the introduction and rise of cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin (not by name of course). And its over 1100 pages versus a handful! More prophetic than this little essay!
Birkle tried to insert his own ideals in that commentary; "I believe that we should all be judged by the truest measure of the value of any personal computer: How much does it help us accomplish our tasks?" (firstly, notice he inserted "we" when he is supposed to be talking about an OS?) Except, the OS and device that might do this one year, say WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, won't do so when your peers are using Office 365 online. That's the point! Also, for CompSec pros and System Administrators (even if, like Stephenson, you are only admin for your own PC) The task IS to simply support OS installation. The the PC's value is then measured for being able to monitor and upkeep the information you have kept. "Help us accomplish our tasks" is short-sighted when a major, sometimes the only, primary task is to help accomplish the "accomplishment of tasks" -so to speak.
What was obvious to Stephenson as someone maintaining his own linux machine, should still be clear to us in 2021, as we maintain our social media sites. Although now we are building with "web apps", and various applications built upon the foundation of linux running on internet servers (sometimes now referred to as "the cloud"). And perhaps the more common version of today's "command line" is editing HTML "by hand", or at least we are aware that "text" HTML (and CSS and Javascript. Not so much Flash anymore) is more powerful than the "visual" tools for website creation. And the connections should have occurred to Birkle, as his commentary percolated through the web.
Unfortunately also in ItBwtCL: "the U.S. Government's assertion that Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market might be the most patently absurd claim ever advanced by the legal mind." Well, Neal, being a monopoly isn't even a crime! It's only specific "anti-competitive practices" that are illegal, many of which can only, in practice, be committed by a monopoly. And Internet Explorer did kill Netscape. But Birkle doesn't spot and correct this, which is a real shame. Simultaneously, the case was not so absurd, and there have been oh-so-much-more-absurd claims made by the "legal mind"!
Returning to the main subject of operating systems; Apple's switch to OSX also wouldn't be until 2001 (an operating system with strong roots in "command line" Unix) ChromeOS is based on the Gentoo Linux kernel, as is Android(see a pattern here?), and not only do they both have linux roots, but they are "free" as in the "free beer" sense. Microsoft then failed badly in smartphones, as might have been predicted. So, Neal didn't foresee smartphone operating systems, but pretty much everything in his final paragraphs was borne out, just moreso in those the smartphone OSes he didn't expect, in no small part because Microsoft didn't have a monopoly (or pseudo-monopoly) in that space.
I hear younger generations saying, "but oh, Neal didn't address me and my particular snowflake situation, so he's a big stupidhead!" (note I'm addressing specific bad reviews on GoodReads here) Poor little cretins. Yes, for many years now (for example), you can get "wordcount" in Word. Although he still has a point about the versatility of "wc" across different apps, not just a particular wordprocessor. (and you can make jokes in British about water closets with "wc". How versatile!) Birkle mentions "wc", but he seems too hurt about Neal attacking his precious GUI to really see the point.
I could also mention how Micro$oft itself is now putting out Open Source Software; even their main IDE, Visual Studio Code, runs on Linux is and is Open Source (mostly. I recommend VSCodium, which is a version with tracking and telemetry is disabled). And Windows Subsystem for Linux! What a concession!