Linux with a few blobs is still light-years better for your freedom than osx or windows. Plus, from a platform perspective, software built on windows or osx is categorically not free (in the strictest sense - even if the software is gpl, if it's built for a nonfree os, it's still not very useful in the grandest scheme of things even if it's better than if it were proprietary as well). However, software written for linux can be truly free.

Note when I say "written for" I'm not even really speaking very technically - lots of programs written nowadays won't really have any particular dependency on a library that's only available on a certain OS. But if you're using an application that's written in a platform-agnostic way but the programmer only develops it and uses it on a Mac, it's usually easy to tell. Both in terms of system interop/integration and how bugs are prioritized.

So, even if people do things you don't like on their linux install, it's still far better to have as many people on linux as we can get.

Linux isn't just an OS you use because you want to use free software.

For a good number of people it's just better than Windows and macOS.

Maybe so, maybe other people just don't know, for those who don't know it may be good to read how this all got started, so here's my two cents: https://www.gnu.org/

I understand this, and I am someone who started using free software for philosophical reasons. But if you're interested in free software succeeding, it's a better strategy to meet people where their needs are rather than push any particular selling point. If someone switches to Linux because their Steam games run smoother than on Windows, more power to them! And then we can sell them on all the free software that their distribution just happens to come with, and also educate them about the philosophical underpinnings along the way.

This is the way.

Even if you keep all of your proprietary applications, switching from Windows to Linux still means your system is less proprietary than before, so it's still a step in the right direction.

I'd prefer not to use Zoom or Slack, but my clients use them, so I end up using them, as well. Matrix is getting better, and I've heard good things about Jitsi and its clones, so hopefully one day I can ditch the proprietary apps for open ones.