That's likely something directed towards corporate clients, since they may want a standardized set of icons on the desktop or in the Start Menu. It doesn't have a great impact on home users simply because they have an administrative account to start with. Well, that's not entirely true. It does add a great deal of complexity that makes it more difficult to manage.

I am hesitant to agree that the Linux desktop is any better though, since it is a plurality of desktops that can differ quite dramatically between distributions. Even something like Gnome can vary significantly between distributions since a lot of maintainers will modify it to suit their audience. Then again, if you pick a distribution and stick to it, any given implementation is vastly better (at least in my opinion).