If you really think about it from the point of view of defaults, Windows is a even worse mess.
* You often need to do non-standard system tweaks to get the system in a working state. It's everything-doesn't-work-by-default.
* You often need to install/prevent instalation of bad quality drivers and associated bundleware to make devices work.
* Microsoft can't decide what UI framework they will support (or drop support) so built-in applications happens to be built with the current "thing", the old ones staying on the older unsupported frameworks.
* You need to constantly tweak a combination of Windows 3.11 control applets, Windows 95 control panel applets, Windows 7 unified control panel glass, and Metro Settings Universal Windows Platform app to keep things working.
* Microsoft can't decide what random widgets go on the taskbar, or the file manager, or your start menu, so it's always disrupting things every few updates.
It is arriving at a point where the only "consistent" UI thing in Windows is Steam, and Steam isn't built-in, and is a hot mess of inconsistent UI itself.
I'm 12 years into Linux on the desktop. It's amazing. Converted my non computer friend to it. My partner freaked when windows 10 tried to install itself years ago, and she switched. I play triple A games on it via steam. Our TV PC runs it.
The experience is so much better I really don't get this mentality.
It's not a "mentality" - it's an opinion born from actual experience with broken Linux setups. I can find you literally hundreds of HN comments about all sorts of ways that their Linuxen have broken, and I can name a few dozen (possibly up to a hundred) myself.
I have zero confidence in that testimonial, given my own experience with open source desktop environments, and KDE. zero confidence whatsoever.