> Linux is free, but you pay for it with your time.

People like to repeat this thought terminating cliché because they think it makes them sound smart and insightful, to doubt that a free thing is really free. But it's an uniquely naive opinion.

On Windows or MacOS, it's more often than not that, when you meet a problem, the only thing you can do is throw your hands into the air, and suffer the problem. This is paying with your time. Every single time you have to sit and wait through a forced update, this is paying with your time, in the realest sense of the word. You give your time for continued use of the product, and nothing else.

What people mean with the idiotic folk-wisdom is that you spend lots of time with the internals of Linux.

That's not true, but let's assume it is. The internals of Linux are likely a thing you'll really want to learn in depth if you're professionally into any computers science related job, because the market has settled on that.

If you're not, it's also something you'll want to learn, because Linux's design makes a single skill you learnt applicable in a lot of different workflows. So stuff you learnt while troubleshooting, you may adapt in other situations.

You don't pay with your time, you invest your time. Like all investments, it has an initial cost and dividends. It's a pretty good investment.