I wrote "they are becoming much more powerful". The point isn't to beat big players, the point is that we will be able to run models that are just capable of what need, not the super smartest models available. Your last sentence I agree with, that may very well be what happens, except by then we'll have Qwen4 and it'll be even more efficient and more powerful.
Awesome, never get discouraged, there is much you can learn and do by switching to Linux. I personally use Linux Mint for everything, and I've never had any major issues. A lot of things are almost exactly the same as on Windows.