Of course, the whole point is that my desktop is part of the network like any remote server. You are not a client of servers, you are a member of a network.
AFAIK, rdesktop and logmein are far behind (more difficult to setup and to use).
https://code.google.com/archive/p/win-sshfs seems dead.
AFAIK, docker does not work on windows home edition.
My scenarios are not made up. These are my very usual and simple use cases of linux. I do not know any windows user that do the same. Do you have a backup copy of your 1TB hard drive on the cloud ?
I'm not saying your scenarios are made up and I sympathize with them, but I think most people choose to store their stuff in the cloud so they don't need to worry about the devices they physically touch.
I think you're gonna have a hard time convincing people these days that the answer to all the scenarios you listed shouldn't just be "lol cloud", too. :/