After my first attempt of ending the universe failed...

What they are doing is spinning a story according to what sells, and to what little they understand of the details.
Accusing Linus of having built a cult of personality is uninformed, rude, and plain clueless. Granted, there _is_ a cult of personality of sorts, because many people love using Linux, trust Linus' technical judgement, find his manners amusing for the most part, and are not easily offended. I'm one of those "cultists".
I still cherish the clash of civilisations between Linus and Andrew S. Tanenbaum (whose opus magnum sits on my bookshelf and is cherished as well). Even then, Linus could go ballistic in a highly entertaining way, and apologise when it was pointed out to him that he was drifting off-target.
But to suggest he _built_ a cult around himself without any proof is just an intellectual short circuit, to put it very mildly.
That's when "I don't like how the world is" equals "something sinister must be at play here".

The title of the piece is disqualifying already. "After years of abusive emails", in this time and day, alludes to all kinds of things that are really orders of magnitude worse than Linus' lack of civility. That's what I hate about PC shitstorms - all of a sudden, raping a person is the same as grooming and blackmailing teenagers is the same as wanking in the presence of others is the same as having an affair is the same as yelling at people.

How about "after years of managing a huge project by email (the first few entirely for free), and occasionally hitting a wrong note and hurting feelings, but also preventing many ill-advised kernel misfeatures"? But no, that's not going generate those clicks...