I think a lot of 'gatekeeping' criticisms towards the kernel are entirely without merit (certain people seem to treat daring to subject their contributions to code review as gatekeeping).
However the kind of shit shown in the pic here I stumbled across on reddit absolutely is.
DO NOT listen to people who tell you you can't do things. I hate to see people being told 'this is not for you'.
A big part of my motivation in kernel stuff is that many would say it's not for me. Losers like that will sit there telling you what you can't do while you go do it. Let them rot.
The wonder of linux is that you're limited only by your effort, intelligent and talent (yes there's some politics but honestly vastly less than many projects/certainly proprietary software).
So fuck anybody who tells you you can't.
Also it's totally fine to wonder what laptop might work better for linux kernel dev (i.e. lots of cores actually for compilation), this was literally the search that I was performing... and err I've contributed a decent number of patches so yeah.
I guess TL;DR: guys who don't understand anything posting opinions on the internet, hardly a surprise.