I am a Windows guy, but I also spend a very big slice of time on Linux - I fix computers for a living.
I can be sitting on the System Desktop as user:System in mere seconds on a Windows box, even if I don't know it's passwords.
It is infinitely harder to hack a *nix box, even at the simplest levels, because of the no-man's-land between the system/root and Userland.
I have been fixing computers since the mid/late 80's and I have yet to have *any* computer other than Windows boxen cross my bench with infection (except for those I infected purposefully as proof of concept research).
As I said, I am primarily a windows guy - I use it all the time, and I write for it - But the reason Windows gets more bugs is because it is hilariously easy to exploit, and always has been.
Well then I guess you know more than the experts quoted in the article. Maybe they should have just asked you, the desktop tech.