to be fair every OS can and does do telemetry, say nothing about each software application calling back home in a similar way - such feedback helps speed up improvements however linux OS makes explicit notice of this and its simple to disable
But there's an even more important issue here. Even if there were some form of telemetry in Linux you'd be able to see exactly what it's collecting and where it's sending it since the OS itself is open source. I do not think many people are mostly okayish with purely diagnostic telemetry, but it's not clear exactly what Microsoft is collecting and their transition to a sort of 'free to play' style of OS does not lead one to the most optimistic views for either the type data they're harvesting, or their intended use for such data.
At least for Debian, at install time it does ask you if you want to participate in the "popularity contest" apt telemetry. But, on the other hand, it's opt-in with the "no" option preselected.
In short: If you can find me any on-by-default telemetry in Slackware, I'd be very interested.
Recent MS "improvements" indicate things should not have been sped up.
Developers and businesses in particular have grown complacent with flagrant and repeated usurpation of their user's expectations of privacy. It needs to stop.