The article doesn't need to explicitly state that, because it's a simple comparison to make.

its not an issue unless you have a 20 year old computer.

Plenty of computers have been made without TPMs in the last 10 years, as well as built by people who have no need for one, or else they simply disabled it.

The article states;

Without Secure Boot or a TPM, though, installing these upgrades in place is more difficult. Trying to run an upgrade install from within Windows just means the system will yell at you about the things your PC is missing. Booting from a USB drive that has been doctored to overlook the requirements will help you do a clean install, but it will delete all your existing files and apps.

If you're running into this problem and still want to try an upgrade install, there's one more workaround you can try.

Download an ISO for the version of Windows 11 you want to install, and then either make a USB install drive or simply mount the ISO file in Windows by double-clicking it.

Open a Command Prompt window as Administrator and navigate to whatever drive letter the Windows install media is using. Usually that will be D: or E:, depending on what drives you have installed in your system; type the drive letter and colon into the command prompt window and press Enter.

Type setup.exe /product server

That is objectively not much different than the majority of Linux installs in terms of what you're having to do just for an upgrade. That's the point the person above was making. You can't click a button, you have downloaded an image, mount it, and run through a setup.

You want to talk "smug", yet you're the one being triggered enough by seeing Linux mentioned in a perfectly valid comparison to the point you have to hop on your soapbox about "why Linux has a bad reputation".