The claim that Ubuntu is somehow related to Windows is, of course, ridiculous. What's more ridiculous, though, is how the author assumes it matters which free desktop he's running. It's, basically, an open invitation for flame war.
I found the absence of any references to Debian odd. I say that because for me the choice among Linux distributions is largely a choice of what kind of package management you want to use.
One thing I related to in the article was the reference to the early days of trying Linux:
"I think the first version of Linux I ever tried was from some CD's I found in a magazine back in the mid to late 90's, I think it was version 5 of Redhat."
I like Ubuntu because I have always been more comfortable with dpkg/apt than rpm/yum. I have come to like yum alot more and find CentOS to be a fine choice for servers.
My fondness for Debian is not rational though. It was the first distribution I successfully used. Something just clicked - the install worked, the documentation made sense, apt worked pretty well.
I have dabbled with Gentoo and Slackware and can see the attraction of source based installing. Ditto with NetBSD and pkgsrc. But Debian was my "first"...