You're not alone, but it's an unpopular opinion among geeks. I guess most of them are just bored and therefore love to tinker with these kind of issues. I value my time and prefer not to care about my OS doing things for me. I like to have the option to do so, if I need, but I shouldn't have too. Windows allows that, MacOS doesn't and Linux allows too much of that, even requires it.
Another part is the dopamine rush when an issue got solved. Obviously you don't get any if it works right away.
My windows 10 is running flawless since 2019 and it didn't slow down or get bloated. I have disabled a few options but that's about it. Meanwhile my coworker is fighting bad drivers every day. Not even talking about games that simply don't work at all.
I use Linux at work and it's great when you set up a VM to do one thing and then forget about it.