Not really. When you attack/insult someone, instead of attacking his ideas, it's pretty much universally accepted that you're being an asshole. It's not a matter of debate, interpretation, feelings or political correctness. In his first reply Linus is being an asshole and there is no justification about that. Those who defend him should note that even he realized that and apologized.
That's absolutely not true, and in fact the main issue here is that Linus is very much driven by feelings and not focusing on information. I don't think anyone can seriously argue that adding this to a conversation adds any value:
“Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?“
“If you work in security, and think you have some morals, I think you might want to add the tag-line 'No, really, I'm not a whore. Pinky promise'“
And on and on
Instead of saying "X sucks" or "Whoever thought of X deserves a time-traveller to retroactively induce their abortion", the discussion is better served anyway with something like "X has problem Y; Z is better because of these benchmarks/ tests/ metrics", because then supporters of X have a concrete argument to be convinced by (rather than simply cowed/shamed by) or argue against.
It looks like you're all talking past one other.
This just isn't completely true at all. People can most definitely be intentionally rude to others.
You can certainly choose not to converse with Linus, just like I choose not to converse with overtly politically correct people who may take offense / report little thing, I personally don't have time to worry about if what I said "might" come off as a certain way and really I wouldn't want to be in that situation anyways -- It is exhausting to always have to editorialize what you are going to say in today's hyper-sensititve-filter-bubble-one-worldview monocultures.