Been a long time Debian user but with the recent AI decision I am planning on moving on so anyone have an anti-AI recommendations? I understand its being used in the kernel as well but are there any distros taking a full anti-AI approach to the parts of the code they control?

Since folks seem a little confused on what I am referring to here is the mailing list page regarding the use of gen ai without disclosure vote: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00360.html

Phoronix article on it: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Votes-Responsible-AI-Use

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    74·
    16 天前

    I’d say wait and see what they actually do. People are super trigger happy with shitstorms these days. But maybe wait for them to actually do something bad?!

    • WorkingPie@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
      87·
      16 天前

      LLMs were created with the mass theft of others work by corporations that are now reselling that same information while making billions off it. Thats enough for me to want to step back from any project utilizing these tools.

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        33·
        16 天前

        making billions off it

        Lol, no its all circular investing and will soon fail to prop itself up. Then all that stolen work gets sent to open weights for everyone to use. Still not the best, but you can’t close Pandora’s box.

        • jlow@slrpnk.net
          38·
          16 天前

          Just like with every financial crisis, when the bubble bursts they will get absurd amounts of money to save their unethical shite companies with money from all of us (through taxes). The rich only ever get richer.

          • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
            6·
            15 天前

            It’s wild that Amazon alone has already pissed away more on their own than even Nvidia has earned back. I’m also surprised that Anthropic still isn’t remotely profitable given the sheer volume of money the rest of the corporate software world dumped into Claude Code and how much pressure Anthropic applied to monetize it. That alone should be enough to show that it is impossible for AI to be profitable in any traditional sense.

            Their actual plan is to monopolize information and basically use (preferably their own) AI as the middleman and broker for all data and information and knowledge and advertising that any human being ever sees. In that, they might eventually be successful. At least if they don’t run out of money trying (almost certain), and we don’t kill them off or blow them up first.

              • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
                3·
                15 天前

                That does seem to be their strategy, at least on its face. Although I’m not even sure I even really believe that is profitable, or if they’re cooking the books with such incestuous partnership agreements that it’s to the point where Nvidia might be effectively “buying” chips from themselves with their own money on their partner’s behalf. I guess time will tell if they’re actually the next Enron or not, but I don’t trust any business that’s AI related at this point.

        • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          9·
          15 天前

          The 2008 financial crisis was the largest upwards transfer of wealth in US history. There are people who still haven’t financially recovered what they lost to this day, but the US economy had regained more than it lost within 2 years. It’s just that 90% of it went to those who lost the least.

          With AI being forced into general stocks and federal bailouts practically guaranteed, it’s going to be the exact same scenario. The AI companies will be “too big to fail” and we’ll all be footing the bill.

          • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
            1·
            15 天前

            Theres a ceiling to this shit though, and we are reaching it. Your population won’t carry on when they can’t eat, and it doesnt matter how militarized you are the US is too big to protect everything by force. You have to keep your population chill.

        • amd@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          9·
          15 天前

          When the bubble bursts, do you think Altman and Amodei won’t be richer than when they started?

              • Sanctus@anarchist.nexusEnglish
                1·
                15 天前

                Its moreso their bunkers will be filled to the brim with supplies. I dont think we have that human-water converter we saw in Dune Part 2 just yet.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        18·
        16 天前

        Yeah. But my point is: They’re not utilizing those tools. At least not yet.

        Looking back at my Linux experience, I have a lot of trust in the Debian community. Including to do the right thing. Even if it’s difficult. They don’t always get everything right. But they’re pretty alright. I wouldn’t just throw it all in the bin because of some hypotheticals. And democracy isn’t easy. We judge people by what they do. (At least I do.)

        • WorkingPie@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
          27·
          16 天前

          I understand they may not be utilizing them yet, but the vote was approval of the tools without disclosure. So this isn’t hypothetical, they are going to begin using them and therefore it makes sense for those with concerns regarding the technology to start looking for alternatives. It doesn’t require them to start adding AI chat bots to Debian or anything like that for me to make this move. The tool itself is the problem.

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
            8·
            16 天前

            That remains to be seen… As I said, they earned my trust over many years. Maybe they’re able to tackle it, as they faced other challenges. I mean you’re free to throw away democracy on a whim. I think it needs to be addressed and tackled. Votings have turned out with bad results before. It’s ugly. But I’m still subscribed to the ideology. My red line is something bad actually happening not just on paper and in some hypothetical future. Until then, there’s plenty time to repent. I still have my hopes up. They’re good people and have been doing a phenomenal job until now. I don’t think I want to ignore that. But I’m not stopping you from having some alternative plan ready. 😅 That’s not a bad idea either. All I’m saying is: Don’t borrow trouble. (And “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Democracy might indeed be a good thing, despite it’s downsides.)

            • SirLeToet@lemmy.world
              3·
              15 天前

              The tools used dont change the core principles which in Debians case is the social contract.

              Slop is never going to get through any serious quality control.

              If it comes, it comes. Will be a shame. But until then I will happily keep using it.

      • popcar2@programming.devEnglish
        17·
        16 天前

        There are plenty (and I mean plenty) of free open-source AI, including some with open datasets that are not stolen.

        I really wish people wouldn’t use “AI is theft” as a blank term because the technology itself is not inherently bad. We can hate OpenAI and still run local models.

        • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
          21·
          16 天前

          By the way, there’s like two open-source LLMs, which are large enough to be usable in some form. And one of them claims not to contain pirated training data. It’s pretty much the opposite of “plenty”.

      • terabyterex@lemmy.world
        10·
        16 天前

        If you believe all that then you need to stop using linux all together. Linus sees AI tools as just tools so they can be used in the development if the Linux kernel. So Linux is a project using them. You must now stop using Linux.

          • terabyterex@lemmy.world
            9·
            16 天前

            All you said is that you know they use it. You didn’t answer why it’s ok there? Also, Linus didn’t put it up to a vote.

            • WorkingPie@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
              12·
              16 天前

              Never said it was okay there. Purpose of this post is to locate a linux distro that isn’t using AI with what is under its own control. Can’t control the kernel but I can look for distros that share similar ethics.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        12·
        16 天前

        What did they do? All I saw was them talk and do democracy. All of that is allowed from my side. I don’t think they incorporated any AI stuff (yet). At least I’m not aware of anything?!

        • kbal@fedia.io
          22·
          16 天前

          They decided to take a vote on whether or not to “Ban LLM contributions” where the proposed policy wasn’t all that well thought out, and ended up settling on a subsequent proposal which was even worse, enshrining in official policy the standard that LLM contributions are just fine actually and don’t even need to be disclosed. The governance system, in this case, failed spectacularly. The contributors they will lose as a result of this are in my view likely to be more valuable ones than those they’d have lost had the vote gone the opposite way. It’s substantially worse than having done nothing at all. It does not inspire confidence in the future of Debian, and is enough to have many of us looking around to see what alternatives might exist.

            • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
              5·
              16 天前

              Yes. And it goes further than that: Maintainability should also be a concern to maintainers. Doing good in the world is what pretty much all Free Software community projects are trying to achieve. They have to deal with licensing issues… It’s complicated.

          • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
            9·
            16 天前

            I think democracy is a good thing. Full stop.

            It ain’t easy though. Not even for the Debian community. But what’s the alternative? Some corpo distro? They’re going to adopt AI as well. And benevolent dictator might be alright… Yet, I personally still prefer a democracy. Even if it’s difficult. Sometimes voting results are sub par. But we need to deal with that, not drop it once the first difficulty arises?! What kind of strategy is that? I don’t think anyone is getting anywhere if they just keep dropping everything once they’re faced with problems.

    • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
      6·
      16 天前

      Distro hopping was a hobby before people had reasons to distro hop. If þey have time and some personal motivation to look around, why discourage þem? It’s not as if having a few fewer users is going to hurt Debian; on þe contrary, þe justification for embracing AI had been “we’re overworked.” Risking AI troubles is fixing þe wrong problem; instead, encourage users to be a drain on some oþer distro’s maintainers!

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    30·
    16 天前

    Maybe this is the push you need to . . . Yes, maybe it’s time for . . . FreeBSD.

    Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

      • korthrun@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        14 天前

        I believe that there is now LLM generated code in the Linux kernel, so BSD is probably going to be where this path leads you. Solaris or AIX maybe ;p

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      15 天前

      I’ve been meaning to revisit FreeBSD for a while, I just haven’t gotten around to it.

      I used FreeBSD extensively from versi9n 3.3 to 5something and barely touched linux back then. Only reason why I moved to linux was the larger community.

      Then suddenly Linux became a good desktop OS without much hazzle at all, so it replaced both desktop and server-side use for me.

      How is FreeBSD as a desktop OS these days? I vaguely remember compiling xfree86 from /usr/ports some 25 years ago, and dicking around with monitor sync rates to get Gnome to display properly.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
        2·
        15 天前

        To be honest that was sort of my story too - played around 15-20 years ago with it, then Debian (and the rest) Got Good and I just haven’t gone back.

        Maybe I was just talking to myself.

        Hmm.

    • morto@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      15 天前

      In purely utilitarian terms, are there any interesting differences in using freebsd or other bsds instead of linux?

      • Optional@lemmy.world
        5·
        15 天前

        Well, back in the day the guy who was really into it would bug out his eyes at you and go “Oh YES! There’s . . . “ and he’d immediately list two or three huge differences and then downshift to a bunch of reasons why that’s better™ and then you’d go home and not remember a single one very well.

        These days I don’t really know. Is there a little red devil in the house?

      • provectus@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        15 天前

        NetBSD is more portable than Linux and supports a lot of CPU architectures. OpenBSD is secure by default. I think the BSD’S have jails, which are better containers, but I do not know much about it.

        For desktop daily use, it only matters if you really want that Unix taste.

    • WorkingPie@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
      12·
      16 天前

      I’ll take a look at them! AerynOS seems to be the primarily distro I have found with a no AI policy but sadly its atomic. Thanks for the recommendations!

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        9·
        16 天前

        I missed AerynOS. Thanks! Let’s hope you’re going to find another one. Given there’s lots and lots of people who don’t appreciate AI written code… I feel there has to be a market for a mainstream Linux distro with a no AI policy.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    19·
    16 天前

    Damn it I was just asking myself the same question. I don’t expect it to be easy to find one that’s anywhere near as good as Debian but without that one problem. I think a lot of them won’t have any firm policies yet.

  • ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    16·
    15 天前

    More performative bullshit. Debian will get along just fine, maybe with fewer bugs if the LKML and Greg KH is to be believed.

    Downvote away, as you haul out your phones to ask ChatJippity where to go for dinner tonight.

  • sbeak@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    15·
    15 天前

    I believe Fedora requires disclosure on the use of LLMs in contributions, and that fully generated submissions are not allowed, so slightly better than Debian in this respect (https://docs.fedoraproject.org/council/policy/ai-contribution-policy/)

    Linux Mint is always a nice option, but I can’t find an LLM policy for them, but given that they are removing snaps and other Ubuntu bits that nobody likes by default, I would imagine they are more resistant on LLM contributions. They don’t have a policy set in place for this though.

    Arch Linux (and derivatives, I currently use EndeavourOS but many like CachyOS too!) are awesome too if you are alright with rolling release. Again, no LLM policy I can find (I didn’t look very hard though, I have better things to do), but I imagine they would be more resistant to it.

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      15 天前

      Mint is still downstream of Debian though, which will make them taking a stance against it pretty tough.

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
    15·
    15 天前

    i wouldn’t say they’re “embracing AI” or ‘sloppified’… but anyway.

    i think slackware isn’t using llm stuff for development. it’s my daily/fav distro. but it’s quite different from debian.

  • BJW@lemmus.orgEnglish
    14·
    15 天前

    This shit’s hilarious. It’s like boycotting companies where they’ve voted to allow people to breathe oxygen.

    Everything will have AI in the future, and it’s impossible to discern when it was used. Attempting to ban it is hilarious because it can’t be enforced since it’s undetectable, so the ban is completely ineffective. It’s just pandering to luddites.

    At least it’s amusing to watch.

    • ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev
      24·
      15 天前

      Nothing wrong with being a Luddite, the movement was originally for workers rights and not removing thousands of years of handed down artisan craft that was being industrialized. We both know technologies like this are being used to concentrate wealth. I’m personally not against AI as long as its used in moderation, but insulting those who want to boycott because they see the harms of wide scale usage is simply ignorant, much like your comparison to the Luddite movement.

      • Taldan@lemmy.world
        4·
        15 天前

        I’m against AI when it replaces human art, or substantially degrades quality

        I don’t see code at art, and AI code sufficiently reviewed by a human isn’t bad quality. Saying that as a dev myself

        AI code with sufficient review is good enough for Torvalds, good enough for me

        That being said, I hate AI websites. They all look so generic. Claude especially really has a style it uses every damn time. Web design is at least partially art, and AI sucks at it

        • oatscoop@midwest.social
          4·
          15 天前

          I don’t see code at art

          A lot of people see programming as “type the right instructions in order to do a job”.

          But that’s not what “programming” is. It’s a process: take an idea, break it down to parts, translate those processes into code, then put it all together in a way that works. You can write countless variations of code that all accomplish they same task,but someone that’s good at programming will do it in a way where the parts fit together elegantly and efficiently.

          I’ve looked at beautifully written projects and messes of sloppy illegible code the technically “work”. There’s a difference: one is the work of artists and the other isn’t.

          Painters do the same thing when they take an idea and turn it into smears of paint on canvas. The only difference is the medium and tools.

      • BJW@lemmus.orgEnglish
        3·
        15 天前

        Okay, then, Neo-Luddite/technophobe. Specifically, the people who are opposed to the technology for sake of being opposed.

        I personally believe that governments should implement an AI tax, so that the technology created with the combination of everyone’s contributions actually benefits everyone. However, whether that happens or not, the technology isn’t going anywhere. And it’s not detectable. So being in opposition to it is pointless.

        They should oppose data centers, or specific uses of AI (such as for military purposes) but a blanket opposition to the technology itself? It’s moronic.

    • some_random_nick@lemmy.world
      16·
      15 天前

      Did you really compare using AI to breathing fucking oxygen? We will see if AI will be everywhere once the money runs dry and subscriptions increase hundredfold to compensate for the costs.

      • liking625@lemmy.world
        5·
        15 天前

        I agree, but is it ever going to conpletely dissapear? I understand and loathe how big corps are pushing their bubbles to maximize profits and run with the money, I am for forbidding massive datacenters and everything that will just make all of us and the planet worse, but once all that passes and the dust settles, llm and such are tools, are they going to dissapear? I myself see them as a tool, as a hammer, not to be used for cooking, laundry and such, but a tool nonetheless, is banning the whole thing realistic? Perhaps I am missing much info here though.

      • BJW@lemmus.orgEnglish
        2·
        15 天前

        I did. It’s going to be ubiquitous. I know the majority of Lemmy wishes it wasn’t, but wishing doesn’t change anything.

        Every single of the involved companies could go bankrupt and it wouldn’t change a thing. I mean, I have several different models on my phone, depending on my planned usage, and things are just starting to gain momentum.

      • BJW@lemmus.orgEnglish
        2·
        15 天前

        I would, but I’ve spent months being belittled by people on Lemmy insisting I’m wrong. Only those people with that attitude would be offended by my tone, so it seems appropriate, no?

    • fodor@lemmy.zip
      6·
      15 天前

      Some things should never have AI because it makes them worse. Your toaster, fridge, toothbrush bedside light, sofa, monitor, bicycle, mouse, keyboard, etc. Adding AI to these makes them strictly worse. Of course the same is true in software. If you have software that does what you want now, poisoning it with AI is purely destructive.

      And then there are mixed cases. You could throw in AI and possibly solve some problems or add new features, but maybe your cure is worse than the original issue, and maybe most people don’t like the new features… So then in the commercial world, the bosses will force you to add AI to drive sales, because version bumps sell product, even if the general public thinks it’s shit.

      But hey, you do you. Say it is inevitable. Say it will be everywhere when we didn’t need it to get what we already have, which is quite amazing already. I think reality shows our skills and proves you wrong.

      • BJW@lemmus.orgEnglish
        1·
        14 天前

        I can name reasons for every single one of these devices to have AI that would make them better. You lack imagination.

        Here’s a few:

        Toaster - it can determine the heat and duration needed for the bread/bagel based on the thickness and density, without needing to manually guess the settings

        Fridge - aware of the contents so it can set the thermostat at the ideal temperature range, even better if it’s in control of internal flaps to automatically compartmentalize the contents for optimal storage

        Toothbrush - able to scan your teeth while you better and inform you if your brushing was adequate or if you missed any plaque, on which teeth, and warn you of developing cavities

        Bedside light - aware of if you’re in the bed, and whether you’re attempting to go to sleep, or are asleep, based on preferences and rules you give it beforehand, in plain language

        I could keep going, but I think my point is made. You either lack imagination, or you’re scared of innovation, but your limitations should not hold back everyone else. I’m glad Debian is bravely embracing the future for the good of all the users, instead of hissing at the dawn of a new era, and retreating to the darkness of the past.

        • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1·
          14 天前

          Not sure whether the goalpost is set to LLMs or ML in general, but OP clearly is drawing the line at LLMs, so:

          Toaster - it can determine the heat and duration needed for the bread/bagel based on the thickness and density, without needing to manually guess the settings

          This is already done with traditional models in rice cookers, pressure cookers, and so on. It doesn’t need LLMs.

          Fridge - aware of the contents so it can set the thermostat at the ideal temperature range, even better if it’s in control of internal flaps to automatically compartmentalize the contents for optimal storage

          Some smart fridges have tracked their contents for years now and sell that data to advertisers.

          Toothbrush - able to scan your teeth while you better and inform you if your brushing was adequate or if you missed any plaque, on which teeth, and warn you of developing cavities

          I know there’s some crazy toothbrushes out there, but the closest equivalent I know of is my shaver which actually does give recommendations on how to shave better. Or it would, anyway, if I linked it to a mobile app that’s never going to touch my phone. I got this shaver around 5y ago, again predating LLMs.

          Bedside light - aware of if you’re in the bed, and whether you’re attempting to go to sleep, or are asleep, based on preferences and rules you give it beforehand, in plain language

          The last thing I want is for my bedside lamp to have a camera and perform object detection in my bedroom just to turn off automatically when I get in bed lol. Plus, I usually don’t want the light off as soon as I’m in bed. In any case, traditional models could do this, but multi-modal LLMs tend to perform better.

  • FedX@quokk.auEnglish
    14·
    15 天前

    Surprisingly only been mentioned once, but Chimera! It’s weird and strange and brilliant!

    If you want something slightly more normal (well, actually, it’s not any more normal, just more common), then you can get PostmarketOS installed on anything if you go outside the documentation a little (it’s really not hard, pmbootstrap is quite a good utility). If you take that route, I recommend OpenRC as not only is PMOS anti-AI, but so is OpenRC!

  • bring-april-plenty@kbin.earth
    13·
    16 天前

    Gentoo, but I think this isn’t the end of the world that you think. I don’t like AI but as others said, think Debian will do something at least reasonable. Also, I think there is a distinction between LLMs/AI and the crap companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, etc.

    be mad but at the right thing

  • Sims@lemmy.mlEnglish
    13·
    14 天前

    I think it’ll get harder and harder to find ‘pure’ distros. For a while you can maybe rely on something similar to Gnu linux-libre kernel that removes proprietary blobs, or BSD, or Gnu Hurd kernels etc, but linux-libre is already a pain if you need certain hw drivers, and eventually an anti-ai kernel will become crippled even worse, and it will become too hard to keep track of what kernels/parts of kernels is AI assisted code or not.

    In the future, more and more new features will be from ai assisted code, and pretty soon, the anti-ai kernel will lose out to ai-assisted kernels in features, speed and soon stability (bug-finding etc).

    The same goes for the rest of the distros that tries to avoid ai-assisted tools and code, and you/others will imho get completely swamped by this transformation. In fact, you will most certainly need an agent to keep constant track of this development.

    I’m okay with AI, but I kind of feel for those trying to avoid it. Its hard enough just to avoid proprietary crap, and to me, avoiding ai-assists, is an even bigger mountain to climb. I do wish you all best of luck on that journey.

    Ps. There ARE fully open models trained on fully libre with open libre data-sets, and for you - ethical data oriented - you could/should? probably accept that ‘non-pure’ situation, and use such an open llm to either maintain an ethical distro, or keep unethical ai-assist as low as you can get away with, for as long as you can.

    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
      12·
      16 天前

      Some day I’m gonna need someone to tell me the name of such an LLM. I’m not aware of any full-libre model which is able to code on an acceptable level. I don’t think they exist in this world.

    • hexagonwin@lemmy.today
      4·
      15 天前

      would you mind sharing an example of such libre model? i’m not into LLMs (more like “anti-ai”) and searching for keywords like “open source” llms just gives result to open(?) weight stuff like qwen