I use DragonFly BSD btw
Just let me know how to disable it, OK?
I still feel (without any substantiating evidence) that having ai capabilities in my OS that can act without clarit y on user permissions or controls, feels like a vulnerability that will be exploited. Any recommendations to switch to if Mint should start introducing this stuff?
Don’t want an AI to look on the internet and decide my problem could be solved by removing the French language…
Linux Mint Debian Edition exists exactly because the Mint maintainers saw this coming
So glad I jumped off the sinking ship and installed CachyOS instead
Okay, I understand that Linux Mint can be Ubuntu or Debian… But as a Mint user, would these changes even take place on my end? I don’t entirely understand how these versions are forked. I don’t believe I use Ubuntu… But is mint just built on a new Ubuntu infrastructure?
Can someone smarter than me please help? Lol
So from my cursory research (I am a Debian user for context) it sounds like base mint is based off of Ubuntu and LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is directly based off of Debian.
The fact that Mint is based on Ubuntu does not necessarily mean that these Ai features will make it in. The Mint maintainers are still in charge of what comes prepackaged in the distro and can remove what they/the community does not like. I’m not sure on their alignment/history so I can’t say for sure which way they will go.
If you use LMDE then the Mint maintainers don’t need to remove the Ai features wince they were never in there in the first place.
Sorry I can’t give you a direct yes or no… And this might be a lot of info that you already knew but hopefully this helps some others too.
No, honestly, this is a great explanation. That’s how I basically thought it works, but I’m very new to the ecosystem, and didn’t want to make assumptions.
No worries.
I used to use Ubuntu and then pop_os!
But I have since switched to debian and honestly I have not run into many issues that I didn’t already have with pop. I just like having something more bare bones but not as bare bones as arch.
I ran pop as well and switched when the audio (with Citrix) was all screwed up. Went to LMDE mint and haven’t had any issues since.
So majority of distros you see are typically based off of another, as you’re already aware.
We have Debian based distros such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Kali Linux, PopOS and so on, then we have Arch based distros such as Arch Linux, Manjaro, EndeavourOS and so on, and then we got Fedora based distros such Fedora, Nobara, RisiOS.
You get the idea.
Now if Debian were to move a package from unstable to their stable repository all these derivatives will also pick it up however, they can prioritize their own packages from their own repositories over the ones supplied by Debian.
If you’re using Linux Mint cat
/etc/apt/sources.listand also check out the files in/etc/apt/sources.list.dand you’ll see the repositories your system pulls from. You can add repo’s there if you want but you have to be cautious that the packages in the repo don’t conflict with the ones already installed, that means ensuring the versions are also supported on your distro.I’m sure others can give more detail on Arch and Fedora based systems as I am not personally well familiar with those distros and how they store their sources files.
I also have a plan for Ubuntu Linux…
And Craponical wonders why Fedora is pulling ahead… Wonder if it’ll be in a snap package…
Ubuntu is the Windows 11 of Linux distros.
Can we please not? People are leaving Windows because it slaps AI to everywhere unnecessary
There will be plenty of distros that don’t. Ubuntu tracks as the first one that would.
Deepin has AI already. Main reason I am curious about it, problem is privacy implications
I think RHEL and Fedora did first, could be wrong though
wait Fedora has AI bullshit in it? that’s a shame, Fedora is on my second laptop :(
People running away from windows shouldn’t chose ubuntu then, It might be the most popular distro- and somany people who do use it have similar nonchalant mindset as of windows users, so we people who don’t want shit like that in our operating systems shouldnt use it.
Don’t worry, Ubuntu users, it’ll be optional. They will respect your choi… oh you’ve already left
If they get it right (opt in by default, respects privacy, appropriately sandboxed for security, clearly defined use case, etc.) then I can see how this could be useful.
But it’s a big if.
I’m sorry sir, but this is Canonical.
I still don’t understand how AI would be useful even if I owned the whole stack from the power station on up
People really have no idea what AI is. And in many cases those “AI features” are just machine learning. I’m currently running Ubuntu and I have several AI features running. One of them then is Handy.comptuer and it’s a really nice push to talk voice recognition software. I’m dictating this post with it and it’s awesome.
Another feature is image classifications integrated in Immich. It’s nice to have your personal photo library and all the pictures that you have ever taken classified so that you can search for “dog” or “hamster” or “John”. There are great text-to-speech programs out there. Everything is running locally and stuff like that is really useful to have in your OS. And it won’t boil the planet, the energy requirements are quite low.
Text to speech already existed and doesn’t need AI. Photos admittedly if I could have a sovereign version of Google photos that incorporates some of those features that was FOSS and offline, then ok maybe that’s something useful “AI” can do.
I’m reasonably tech literate though and the idea of even exploring if such a thing is possible seems like more pain than it’s even worth
I know that text to speech does work without AI, but the modern AI-based models are so much better.
It can barf out large outputs fast. As long as you review it and clean it up, it can get you 90% of the way there on a lot of things where you know what the final output should be basically. Need a quick bit of code for a common process? An email requesting a meeting? A picture of a dog burying a bone? A list of which people might be the suspect in the video? Then AI is great!
Need math? Accurate texts or image matching? Use a different tool.
I can envision use cases like wanting to be able to search through all your documents or photos when you can’t clearly remember what you wrote (assuming it’s properly implemented and well-secured, e.g. path-constrained time-limited read-only access), or local chatbot for brainstorming, or if you want to play around with agentic “AI” (automating small things on the local system that aren’t easily scripted) then having one that is private and properly sandboxed would be helpful.
I can see that being useful but to me that’s just like a sovereign/offline large language model basically.
We can call it AI but ultimately that’s just a piece of software I could in theory buy once and forget about
yup. at the moment if you want a truly private, properly useful local AI agent you basically have to set one up correctly, manually, yourself. Having one come as part of the OS already largely set up for the user would be a massive W.
but yeah, If.
I use incus as a sandbox for claude. Previously I used podman, but podman in podman is a pain, so I gave it a full vm 😄
Use Debian
If you want what Ubuntu promised, use Fedora. If you learned a bit after trying Ubuntu, use Debian. If you tried Ubuntu and kinda miss the ease of Windows, use Mint. If you think all of these options sound way too practical, try anything but Arch.
I remember when Ubuntu was good. It sure isn’t now.
I’m old too.
I tried it out for a while back when Feisty Fawn was new during my college years. Am I old?
I didn’t remember if it was “good”, I was just amazed at the time that noon Windows OSs existed at all. But gaming back then was not happening so it was kinda useless to me.
I did dual boot it for a while but it was shooting to do that every time I got on to play for a while, reboot to get some schoolwork done, some (sure that shall not be named) ing done, and reboot again to play games again.
Especially since I had spinny drives at the time. Rebooting even now is annoying but quicker than that was. Still wouldn’t deal with it now tho.
Yet another reason to use a different distro.
One of the most popular Linux distributions is about to get an influx of AI features. As reported by Phoronix, Jon Seager, VP of engineering at Ubuntu developer Canonical, shared a blog post on Monday detailing plans to add AI features to the Linux distro over the next year. As the post states, the AI features “will come in two forms: first as a means of enhancing existing OS functionality with AI models in the background, and latterly in the form of ‘AI native’ features and workflows for those who want them.”
These features will range from accessibility tools like improved speech-to-text and text-to-speech to agentic AI features for tasks like troubleshooting or personal automation. According to Seager, Canonical will be prioritizing model transparency and local inference when adding these AI features. Behind the scenes, Canonical is also encouraging its engineers to use AI more, but Seager noted that “I will not be measuring people at Canonical by how much they use AI, but rather continue to measure them on how well they deliver.”
Seager goes on to add that AI features could potentially help new users navigate the “famously fragmented” Linux desktop ecosystem: “If we’re careful about how we employ LLMs in a system context, they could demystify the capabilities of a modern Linux workstation and bring them to a much wider audience.”
Yes. Agentically automate
rm / -rfThe idea sounds reasonable to me.
Of course, between idea and execution a lot can change. But as long they take some sane design decisions (opt-in, transparent, sandboxed, give the user freedom to use their own API or local models, etc), I’m fine with it
