I do not share this opinion at all. On the contrary, I believe that the day software licensing ceases to be relevant, we will slowly and inevitably return to times of slow technological development, expensive and insecure services, and high levels of legal conflict.
I got tired of reading "expert" opinions in this thread... All throwing numbers that "don't add up", but at the same time confusing some elements of the story to make it sound as "fake". Sometimes, there are just hard workers seeing an opportunity to grow after years of waiting and fighting. You see the deal, it sounds risky but you think you can do it and maybe it can change your life... You trust the wrong person, don't do your double checking, and boom, it just explodes in your face. Maybe that would never happen to this "experts", but it could definitely happen to me.
last time i checked Alpine linux I had the idea that the desktop functionality was barely supported (i think the only DE available was XFCE, which is fine to me, but the install documentation seemed incomplete). I think I'll give it a try also.
I read HN regularly since a couple of years, but registered just for this comment. My first GNU/Linux distro, but in early 2000. I have great memories from that time, it was "harder" but very rewarding. The best example of less is more. Today I'm using Devuan to escape from systemd, and I think I'll give Slackware 15 a try <3