Who is “they?” Do you mean big tech companies? They have a financial incentive to keep you buying their products. They need customers to survive. They need your telemetry and your data to sell to make money.
Linux doesn’t NEED you to pay for it. Paying for Linux by contributing to a project can make it better, but it isn’t required. Linux distributions are up front about data collection and require you to enable it manually. You can learn coding and inspect the very code that runs on your computer and know it’s safe and doing ONLY what it says it is doing.
There are thousands of Linux communities with millions of users who offer help and guidance for free. Big Tech just wants your money.
Own your computer. Use Linux.
This. I’ve gone ‘round the Cape of Distros and found myself reinstalling Linux Mint on all of my older computers because it just fucking WORKS without complaint or issue.
Using Fedora on my newer laptop, but for a distro that you don’t have to think about at all and just USE, Mint is hard to beat.