An early exit is not the worst thing in the world, but an edge case is still an edge case. And if you have full "end of list" checks you make it even worse because now you're doing that in two places too. And if you do something with the entry, now that's in two places.

Sure, the case where it's the head of the list is simpler by itself. But treating it specially means more code, and more duplication, and it's not even faster.

To criticize the cleverness of Linus' code is fine. But the algorithm is the argument here, not the specific way he wrote it.

Edit: Also, I don't really buy into your argument about for loops. You trade one problem for another. Your version won't segfault (except the case where it does), but it will silently fail to remove anything.