Has nothing to do with intelligence.
This is just a different knowledge domain, and there is shockingly little overlap with a traditional CS education.
To expand on this, its the difference between knowing a field of knowledge, lets take cooking, and how to use a tool, lets say a knife. While you can learn a lot about how to use a knife by going to culinary school much of the knife and the process surrounding what makes a good knife, good and bad knife, bad is very specific knowledge. The analogy kinda falls apart because you need to touch on the topics and metallurgy and industrial process but hopefully that paints a reasonable pictures. Linux is a tool, a very complicated tool with specific features. CS/SE/IS education is a very general set of skill which should apply across not just Linux but most/all of computing.