Muggles be damned my friend! You and I benefit every day from those kind developers who give away their time. I prefer to speak kindly of them whenever I get a chance. They're my heros.

I prefer to honour the producers of my tools with the money they deserve.

Given your listed preferences, it would be better for us all if you didn't.

In another 10-15 years, I think the computing landscape may be quite different. Much like 15 years ago, most people didn't own a smartphone, and the trend was people moving off desktops onto laptops.

On the one hand - game consoles are becoming more like PC's. More and more people are eschewing Laptops/Desktops outside of work in favor of only using mobile devices / game consoles. I certainly am increasingly hearing from friends that they don't own a computer at home - and one of these guys is a director of development.

I see this trend continuing - people just finding that they don't need more computing power at home than their mobile devices provide. I think docking a mobile device to use as a desktop environment will still be niche, but probably really impressive and finally ready for prime time for those interested in it.

Desktop Linux is a pipe dream, because like as not desktop computing itself will become less relevant. Relegated to the confines of your working life, and outside of that most people will be using controlled devices which are part of a locked-down ecosystem.

My 2 cents anyways.

Definitely, on the university related coffee shops that I regularly go to, tablets from both ecosystems dominate the tables, some of them with keyboards.

It is visible a trend of newer student generations eschewing traditional laptops.

Ironically this vertical integration is a return to how computers used to be like before IBM failed to prevent PC clones to take off.