Literally any time Windows is mentioned

That's not true. Linux users do this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than Microslop users. Microslop has billions of users, but fewer than 20 fanboys, worldwide.

(Also applies to "Lemmy users" on the top and "Reddit users" on the bottom)

That's okay because unlike Windows, Linux isn't guilty of market capture, adware, spyware, bloat, and any number of other things that are wrong with windows.

It happens when MS does something that annoys their userbase. Then Linux nerds jump in and tell how much Linux is better.

If I didn't have to use windows for work...

Yes. Because we want native support from apps. Windows has the market share to not care. Linux is getting there but is nowhere near to even macOS.

Windows users don't think about or even realize that other operating systems exist

I put off the switch for ages due to similar reasons, tried once that failed horribly. Later had a motherboard failure and Microsoft showed their whole arse. Reactivated the dual boot, channeled my inner old woman energy, solved the video issue and have been happily tinkering with the smaller issues as they come up. Still playing whack a mole, but now I'm getting things the way I want them, instead of disabling things I'm being told I want by some corporate nutcase.

And hilariously, I am spending less time maintaining Linux than I did for Windows.

You're a honorary member of the cool kids!

Linux/GNU BTQI+

I keep my dislike of Linux to myself.

Clearly.

Oh it does happen. I've had people tell me linux isn't a desktop OS multiple times and they listed ludicrous reasons that either are completely irrelevant or not true for like 10 years.

I've also had people tell me that PHP is a shit programming language and the reasons for them hating it were all outdated for like years or even decades. Once had some kid at a university I gave a lecture tell me "PHP doesn't even have classes wtf how are you coding in that shit?" my man classes were introduced in PHP 5 which was released 22 YEARS ago, you weren't even BORN when PHP5 was released.

Some people just want to hate something. Mostly if it's something that's "competing" with what they're using. And that's especially true in the tech world.

Windows users complain and meme all the time about the linux fandom of the fediverse, which is what I assume OP was referring to.

I'll openly admit that I've made comments that could be interpreted as this comic. That said, I don't hate Linux or look to "dunk on" people, I just see a lot of really uninformed takes about Windows being tossed around and can't help but try to correct people.

Like someone said something abysmally wrong and very confidently, I asked them when the last time they used Windows, and they said it had been over a decade. I get that people pull that sort of thing online all the time, but when I see it it bothers me.

So I end up making the occasional comment defending Windows from blatant misinformation in a Linux thread, or insisting that the Linux experience still isn't as smooth as it needs to be for non-tinkerers.

Usually someone will pop up and call me uninformed or something, which is rich given I've been casually messing with Linux since before USB thumb drives were ubiquitous, and I have a little more than a decade of career experience in IT support and systems admin/engineering/architecture neck deep in a Microsoft environment.

I love Linux and open source software. I want it all to succeed. But Windows does have its place, it is valid for certain use cases, and is not anywhere as awful as it's made out to be. Especially if you have the tech chops to switch to Linux, de-crappify-ing Windows is of comparable difficulty and I have not had any of the supposedly unavoidable Windows issues people regularly cite in around a decade.

Switching to Linux is a more than valid choice, but I hate to see it happen only because someone isn't getting good troubleshooting information for a Windows issue.

I also have a seriously hard time keeping my mouth shut when Linux users claim daily driving a Linux Distro as a smooth process. It is leagues better than it used to be. Mind bogglingly so, and getting smoother every day. But it is still inevitable that you will hit a point of major friction and have to get deep into tinkering, and you will still likely need to make concessions in terms of hardware feature support.

I'm no stranger to tinkering. No stranger to compiling things myself, or even troubleshooting an error all the way down to a specific line of source code and making a PR to correct it.

But I've reached a point in my life where I don't want to be spending hours troubleshooting things that in my mind should "just work". I want more control than Apple offers, and less tinkering than Linux tends to expect.

So I keep up with the Linux space, use it on VMs personally semi-regularly, and maybe once a year give it a serious try as a daily driver. For now, stripped down/customized Windows installs on my gear is more than good enough.