Beware, things are not that easy with Linux. If you use Windows, you use Windows. There are different versions but they are just differently old versions of the same thing. Same company, same people, same stuff. So you can say things like “Windows shares your data with Microsoft”, because there’s only 1-2 current versions of Windows at a time.

Since Linux is so open, there are thousands of different distributions created by thousands of different companies or even hobbyists doing that on their own time. And since it’s so open, it can be configured any which way.

For example, ChromeOS and Android are two Linux distributions created by Google, and both of them collect and share your data like crazy.

Some of the more classical Linux distributions (like e.g. Ubuntu) also ask you if you want to share data with them, but most of them allow you do decline and many of them really don’t share data at all (unless you run programs that do share data again).

So what you can say about data protection in regards to Linux is:

• It’s not Windows/Microsoft, which shares a lot
• Depending on the distro, it can share just as much as Windows, or nothing at all, or a configurable amount
• There are Linux distros that are very privacy focussed and share little to no data

But no, using any Linux doesn’t necessarily mean your data is protected in any special way.