Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year : linux

[–] SuperPengato@scribe.disroot.org 110 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

What was that joke about Firefox again? "We're the browser beloved for being the only one not hitting our dick with a hammer. Now, you're probably wondering why we brought this hammer and and took out our dick. Well you see..."

More seriously, I think until the bubble pops, writing "AI" anywhere is a way for companies to attract fundings, and that money is too easy for many to pass.

That's why I tend to trust community managed distros over corpo ones. I don't see Arch or Debian pulling this bullshit.

Tho, I'd still be suspicious of the other big private company, Redhat; which is very involved in maintaining Systemd.

Honestly, if it comes to this I'll distro-hop as far as I need to escape AI.

[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 32 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Red Hat has been all over AI for a while
https://www.redhat.com/en/products/ai

[–] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 28 points 2 weeks ago

Also they have been collaborating with the US and Israel to kill people on wars for some time

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Red Hat has been all over AI for a while

Hosting LLMs is different from pushing AI crap down end users' throats Copilot style.

[–] spartanatreyu@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago

Hosting LLMs is different from pushing AI crap down end users’ throats Copilot style.

That feels a lot like "War profiteers aren't guilty of shooting the gun".

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

NixOS is whatever distro you want it to be. (As long as you learn Nix…)

[–] BrilliantBadger@piefed.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

Love my Fedora Atomic Cosmic, but absolutely we all be watching to see where they go, and if needed will play the distro-hop game in attempt to stay in the AI free zone

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 46 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Not like we need more reasons to not use Ubuntu.

[–] username_1@programming.dev 23 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

When Ubuntu was just appearing I was using Debian. People laughed at me, saying I am a little bit slowpoke. Now it looks like Ubuntu is starting to die, applying strange decisions. I still use Debian. Well...

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

When Ubuntu was just appearing I was using Debian. People laughed at me, saying I am a little bit slowpoke

Why are you offended being called a slowpoke using slowpoke OS?

I use it on my server because of this reason

Now it looks like Ubuntu is starting to die

Its been dead according to linux purists since 2011 when they went to Unity over Gnome or KDE so ignore them :P

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ubuntu was easier to use out of the box, especially for some hardware like Nvidia hardware in example. Also the software from its repository and the Kernel is not updated nearly as often as Ubuntu. All of this makes it harder to use for Gaming oriented people. Back then Debian users laughed at me (Ubuntu user back then) for using a "toy" distribution. But Debian was not a good option for me back then.

My point is, it does not matter if someone laughs at you. Just use the best option for you.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Just use the best option for you.

Problem is when people don't use what option is best for them and make everything worse for the people who are then asked to help them (or even worse are completely unrelated and have to bear the burden anyway). There are fundamental problems how Canonical distributes security fixes (many locked behind Ubuntu Pro which is free for personal use but still requires signing up for it) and these problems are inherited by Ubuntu remixes like Mint and popOS.

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[–] Muffi@programming.dev 42 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The enshittification og Ubuntu and Firefox these last years have been tragic to watch, even though i no longer use any of them.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

At least Firefox recently got a 1-click "AI off" button. I'd prefer if Mozilla concentrated on the rendering engine first and foremost but that 1-click solution isn't so bad. So at least there's that.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’ll stop looking for alternatives when it becomes a one click AI on button instead.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’ll stop looking for alternatives when it becomes a one click AI on button instead.

Problem is that well maintained alternatives without that shit don't exist. Sure, there are Chromium and Firefox forks that strip all that shit but are you really willing to trust you data security with a fork created by two dudes in their free time to deliver updates the same day as their upstream projects? I'm not. So I rather use Firefox, turn that shit off manually and continue to hope that Servo will be good enough in two years (doubtful).

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yup, that’s why I’m still looking.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yup, that’s why I’m still looking.

I think the best current candidate is WebKit-GTK but here's the looking bit again: I'm looking for a WebKit-GTK browser that adopts traditional cross-desktop UX and not GNOME header bars.

[–] BrilliantBadger@piefed.ca 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Librewolf has done a great job and has a strong stance on disabling/removing AI pieces

But yeah, it's just sad to always be fighting against the tide

[–] Aetherial@nord.pub 4 points 2 weeks ago

Kudos to its little brother, Ironfox.

[–] Keshara@piefed.blahaj.zone 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is going to be all about how they implement it imo. There was a specific line in that article "for those who want it", if they go for an opt-in approach which only then installs the AI capabilities, then yeah okay I don't mind as an end-user.

If however Canonical implement AI into Ubuntu without being opt-in, then I'm out and never turning back.

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[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago

Okay Okay, I'll find a new go to distro.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 13 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Does anyone use Ubuntu anynore?

They've been the evil distro since, what, a decade?

[–] misk@piefed.social 5 points 2 weeks ago

They put out LTS releases which are nice for a home server where you need relatively recent packages and a couple of years of support so that you don’t have to babysit it too much. On a server it’s much closer to Debian experience as you don’t have to deal with snap, flatpak and all that weirdness.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

can't pull Ubuntu away from all the plebs who think it's the best OS in the world.

meh, at least it's not Microsoft. not much better, but still slightly better.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

You'd be surprised

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

https://lemmy.world/post/46121131?scrollToComments=true
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/the-future-of-ai-in-ubuntu/81130

Context from the horse's mouth. The goals seem fine. They might botch the execution as ubuntu has before, but the stated goals seem sesible.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Didn't hey start putting ads into their start menu, search results, or something? This is not really a surprise given that trajectory.

[–] misk@piefed.social 10 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The only ads I notice is that apt shows how many packages can be updated through an optional paid Expanded Security Maintenance. This isn’t very obtrusive but I’m on a 4 year old LTS release currently so things might have changed.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

He's remembering things from Ubuntu 12.10, yeah 14 years ago :)

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago

Oh wow, you're right! That's when I quit Ubuntu. I feel fucking old now...

[–] misk@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I used Ubuntu back then too but I’m a Gnome person so I missed out on this innovation from Canonical.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago

I was remembering my Ubuntu Unity days which apparently ended in 2012 or so. Didn't realise it was so long ago.

Ubuntu might've had ads in the OS even before Microslop. Who knows, maybe they even gave them the idea.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

The only ads I notice is that apt shows how many packages can be updated through an optional paid Expanded Security Maintenance. This isn’t very obtrusive but I’m on a 4 year old LTS release currently so things might have changed.

Receiving updates for anything in Universe requires Ubuntu Pro which is free for home users but still requires signing up to give you access to that update repository and once you sign up, they can match your account with what you install/update, so there is server-side tracking. In theory there is the possibility of community-maintained updates there but that required adhering to Canonical's draconian version freeze rules. Something Fedora and its derivates do not have to that degree (during a release cycle any update is fine if it doesn't break compatibility).

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

All I really want related to AI in my OS is:

The ability to systematically create file embeddings and use them for semantic search. This tech is now 9 years old, it’s not wildly energy inefficient, it only sucks that when you change the model you need to recreate the entire index.
A good accessibility interface that AI tools incidentally benefit from
Accessibility features for humans, like how Apple lets you select text on any image. Or I can send an image to Gemma 4 and the transcriptions are actually quite good running locally (though the model is large)

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

See also the dick-inna-mousetrap thread. https://retro.social/@ifixcoinops/112847682153491798

[–] aichan@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Wow I did not expect that much dedication put into that thread

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

it's pretty legendary

[–] e461h@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

That would make some good reality tv

[–] xep@discuss.online 7 points 2 weeks ago

Why not use Debian?

[–] heliotrope@retrofed.com 5 points 2 weeks ago

(laughs in void)

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 5 points 2 weeks ago

God i dont miss ubuntu and the choice to walk away is even more apparent to have been a good idea.

[–] ComicalMayhem@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How will this affect Mint OS?

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