There are a few good reasons to dislike Windows, the ones mentioned in the article are not part of those.

Levels of abstraction are often in place for good reasons and will determine how we interact with something. Windows owes it's success to much of what the upset linux nerd dislikes.

> If you don't know something, you're stupid about that something.

No, you're _ignorant_ about that something. Stupidity implies an innate lack of ability to understand, whereas ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. I'm not just being pedantic though; these distinctions are important. It's not a matter of being "stupid about computers" vs not. Some people may have a great aptitude but simply be ignorant. Some people may find reasoning about computers difficult even with effort. Most people are probably just uninterested, and would rather spend their time on other things.

If everyone were perfectly capable of using Unix to its fullest, and had the ability, resources, and interest to do so, great. That's not the case though. To use myself as an example, I regularly develop on Linux. I love Linux, and I have a Linux home server and various VMs, as well as running my company's production servers on Linux. But my desktop runs Windows 10.

I use Windows largely because I want it to just work in a seamless fashion without having to do things like spend half a day figuring out how to get my sound card working, or adjust my fan profile, or upgrade a piece of software or whatever. Sometimes I do want to do that, and I love the freedom that Linux offers. It's cool being able to write a quick cron job to regularly check that my sites are up and notify me if they aren't. Or to run a webdav server to grab backups of the pictures I take in full res. (And as an aside, the main reason I use Windows over MacOS is increased flexibility as a user.) Linux is great in many ways.

But honestly, aside from my work, which wouldn't apply to most people, nothing I do with Linux is vital to my life. It's more of a hobby. And even I, as a near prototypical Linux user, often prefer the simplicity of using Windows. So I can certainly understand how most people have no interest in learning Linux at all, and just want something that will run a web browser. And that's fine.

Cars are similar. I like cars. A big part of my business revolves around them, and I'm legitimately interested in them. I own a torque wrench and enjoy that I can change my own tires from summer to winter and back. I don't, however, change my own oil - even though I'm sure I could learn how - because I have other things I'd rather do. And I certainly don't try to diagnose engine problems. I'd rather just use my car as the tool it is, and let a mechanic deal with the more complex stuff. This works fine, and I doubt many people would tell me my car is making me stupid.

It's great that * nix exists. There will always be people that use it out of interest, and/or for the great power and flexibility it offers. And there will always be many more people that want an OS that just does what (little) they need with minimal effort. It's good that both options exist.