this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
207 points (97.7% liked)

Linux

67323 readers
888 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
top 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] novafunc@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Bluefruit@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Seems like a nuanced and balanced take. AI can help or hurt, makes sense to me that they dont really endorse or prohibit it right now.

[–] istdaslol@feddit.org 30 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Well of course Debian won’t allow anything unstable and AI code isn’t old enough to own a horse

[–] bretton.dev@coves.social -3 points 1 day ago

This may have been true last year but nowadays AI is far better and more thorough, and faster than 90% of devs when driven by someone knowledgeable.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There's a minimum age on horse ownership?

[–] NewOldGuard@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago

I think it's a pun about "stables"

[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 days ago

Perhaps if you're younger than the horse, it owns you instead.

[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 38 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 39 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Ubuntu is an ancient african word, meaning "I can't configure Debian"

- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ubuntu

Also, my favorite:

Manjaro is an ancient African word, meaning "I can't install Arch Linux"

- https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Manjaro

[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

Arch is an ancient word meaning "we make it stupid to install so posers can pose"

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I can, I'm just lazy.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

In the other corner, Proposal B seems to lay out something similar to how AI-generated code is handled on the Linux kernel. The proposal allows AI-generated code only if the submitter takes full accountability for it, ensures it's free of copyright issues, and declares any LLM usage.

Assuming full technical responsibility would probably make most AI-generated code pointless, as the whole point of using AI this way is that generating code saves work. Which is not any more the case if the result is really fully reviewed.

This is different from using AI for vulnerability scanning (as it is practised in the Linux kernel).

The other thing is there is no way one can declare AI generated code safely free of copyright isses. You'd need to prove that the result code was not contained in the training data - which is not possible.

[–] gian@lemmy.grys.it 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Assuming full technical responsibility would probably make most AI-generated code pointless, as the whole point of using AI this way is that generating code saves work. Which is not any more the case if the result is really fully reviewed.

When you submit code that you write you take responsibility for it, irregardless of the tools you use. AI generated code should not be different in this aspect.
You can use AI to generate code but you should review it anyway, at least at the basic level to make sure that it does not contain obvious bugs and do what it is supposed to do.

The other thing is there is no way one can declare AI generated code safely free of copyright isses. You’d need to prove that the result code was not contained in the training data - which is not possible.

Which itself should make people to avoid to use AI generated code for anything else than playing around.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago

Copyright code is a fucking stupid concept

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Disagree on your first point. AI will generate code that is mostly correct, the human time cost of (properly) reviewig this code and correcting it is generally less than also writing it. People that do more serious work than vibe-coding oneshot skateboard simulators in html do actually get noticeable productivity boosts even when every generated line of code is reviewed by multiple people.

That is why the kernel allows it, because they mostly care that a human is around that will take responsability for it, that the patches are of the same quality than always and that everything is manageable by humans. This is in contrast to the techbro github repo with commits that span 20 files and 2k edits where there is no hope in hell to understand what is going on.

[–] KitB@feddit.uk 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It is a very well known truism that it is harder to debug code than it is to write it. This is, in my experience, doubly true of the convoluted code generated by current frontier LLMs.

Allowing LLM coding at our org basically stole most of this year's progress from us as every PR made this way still has yet to be merged because the code quality just never reaches anywhere near our minimum requirement.

We are investigating ways to improve this (a style guide for agents etc) but the best step we've taken so far is just to ask people to stop using it and see what happens. (Code quality jumped up and PRs started getting merged, though the LLM ones are still languishing and probably will need rewriting from scratch before we can merge them)

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, my point is that the review should be before the pr, not after.

[–] KitB@feddit.uk 3 points 2 days ago

That doesn't change the fact that it's harder to properly review code than to write code, especially when that code is ten times longer than it needs to be, makes no sensible decisions about how to separate concerns, and might, if you're lucky, pay lip service to naming things well.

I don't necessarily think this will always be the case with generated code, but I expect we'll need a proper breakthrough in the technology before it can write good code (it needs a number of things: actual world models, the ability to go back and edit its output when it realises a mistake -- which is crucially different from saying a new thing that contradicts the mistake -- and continual learning, to name the three that spring to mind).

Even if it started writing perfect code, I'd be dubious of signing your org's ability to write code away to a service that you don't own and has a notable history of intellectual property infringement and an insane disregard for both the law and morality. At the very least we should all be using open weights models.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

AI will generate code that is mostly correct, the human time cost of (properly) reviewig this code and correcting it is generally less than also writing it.

I do not see it play out like this in practice, for example at my workplace. The work of debugging, reviewing, verification, and maintenance is simply offloaded to other people. Which, as a result, have more work, not less.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago

The Promise: "You'll have to work less!"

The Reality: You have to work more, for a literal machine.

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

The people running the agent need to be looking at the code and cleaning it, not someone else, that is the key thing that is missing in all these failures. Linux is the same, they would never accept something that has not at least the same quality as something written by a competent human

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 6 points 2 days ago

The bigger question is that if Debian and Ubuntu have conflicting policies, what does that mean for upstreaming changes from Ubuntu to Debian?

It would eventually result in Ubuntu drifting even farther from ~~God~~ Debian.

Also, downstream distributions from Ubuntu might themselves choose a conflicting policy with similar problems.

[–] Loce@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And what will Debian do with the kernel?

[–] maxihuenu@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

i thinkg that they can do nothing... is sad seeing linux transforming into microslop 2.0

[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

The 'old' article seems to have deliberately missed a lot, and the headline is perhaps misleading? It is perhaps likely that debian expanded on A vs B since the article was written

I was unable to find anything more recent than what has already been posted on lemmy, based around the vote linked below, that contains a lot of long-winded potential outcomes, mainly of which seem deliberately verbose?

https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002

[–] TrollAccount69@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Debian will decide to allow ai code.

E: as it turns out, Debian has decided to allow ai code. I’d like to dedicate this comment that this edit to my haters.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Isn't there already the racist European guy making an AI linux distro? What's the point of Ubuntu embracing it

[–] bleustenns@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

This is a bit reductive on the situation with Ubuntu side of things but I don't know why you're being downvoted since you're not technically wrong lol... vibe-coding on a large scale always results in very poorly structured code unless significant manpower is used for manual review.