RMS could have taken a photo of his screen, or done something cheeky like dump his screen to a padded ASCII text file and submitted that. Stick in the mud.
Linus Torvalds often says that he does not know how to do X (like install a Linux distribution, or other simple stuff). I wager that it's a status thing.
Due to these sorts of quotes from them, I often say semi-seriously that programmers don't know how to use computers. Another thing in this vein I often recall is Notch saying he finds both vim and emacs too confusing/difficult (while many non-programmers can use them both without issue). It may be an over-specialization. With modern labels you could say they put everything into "Dev" and only the bare minimum into "Ops".