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
Linus himself said the linux project is not anti AI and if you dont want AI in Linux, fork it.
just fork it bro, what a disingenuous argument for a codebase with 40+ million lines of low-level code
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 Herd 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.
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
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.
I don’t think you know what a distro is. You’re going to need a distro that doesn’t include any packages that accept AI contributions, which is impossible to detect and enforce.
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.
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.
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.
We’re all super impressed
By what? Are you just easily impressed and assume everyone else is, too? Your response is a mystery 🤔
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.
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.
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.
👍 Here’s a star: 💫
Thank you, Experimental Guy. I’ll put it on my fridge to remind me of the time I got a star from you.
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
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.
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.
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.
As a person who agrees with you:
Can you at least try to be convincing instead of coming off like an asshole?
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?
You realize that you’re in a tech sub right?
You realize that Lemmy doesn’t have subs right?
It’s more convenient than saying community.
This is actually a pet peeve of mine too, either go back to Reddit or get with the lingo.
How?
3 characters vs 9. 1 syllable vs 4.
No, my Lemmy client combines the comments from all the subs for a post into a single view. You may be replying to this comment from a tech sub, but that’s not the view I have.
Are you sure you’re not mixing up Debian for Ubuntu?
I’m pretty sure Debian just said they weren’t going to allow AI contributions
The pro-AI option that doesn’t require disclosure won. It has already caused one Debian developer to resign, and an ex-dev to comment on it.
Posted some context in the description but the short version is Debian maintainers just voted to allow AI code without disclosure. Here is the vote: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00360.html
Am I reading it wrong? Did ban ai via social contact not win?
Nope. It’s a little confusing to read but option 5 won. It’s showcased in the part that lists the winner.
Debian isn’t “ambracing AI”? Where’d you get that?
Ubuntu has been making plays in that direction. Not the same thing.
Debian devs voted to allow AI contributions.
Not even the same thing. They’re not stupid. They know people are going to use it. EMBRACING it would be more like adding AI nonsense tools wherever they can, and rely on automated systems that are based on LLMs to contribute code, which is not what’s happening here.
Posted some context in the description but the short version is Debian maintainers just voted to allow AI code without disclosure. Here is the vote: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00360.html
Because the people submitting the code are to be held responsible as always. If you are using Claude gemini or whoever and submit its code without checking. And you fuck something up that is on you, and you will be held responsible. Is how it should be.
People are going to use it if they want to. And realistically there isn’t a lot that you can do to stop it all. They’ll just start using it without attribution. There is no automated system that will be able to stop it. And policing it manually will do nothing but bogg down the current maintainers allowing them to accomplish even less.
If someone is submitting a lot of problematic slop code they don’t understand. They will be booted from the project like any other bad maintainer.
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?!
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.
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.
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.
Still not the best, but you can’t close Pandora’s box.
Then mandate local ai only. Fuck big ai company with an anchor.
No one is gonna do that when they are on the cusp of eternal surveillance
We talk about opensource coding project what has to do with surveillance?
I mean if want to have “ethic” ai use ban any non local ai from use.
mandate local AI only
You said this. No one with the kingdom keys is going to do this because the actual purpose is surveillance.
Yeah but has nothing to do with context.
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.
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.
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.
The meme about Nvidia selling pickaxes to gold diggers really is accurate
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.
God damn love to see it
When the bubble bursts, do you think Altman and Amodei won’t be richer than when they started?
I think there will be two new piñatas in the water wars of 2035
I know we’re talking about corps, but damn, humans as water piñatas is so mad max
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.
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, though. (At least I do.)
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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. That’s not “plenty”.
Which ones are those two?
Yeah, good question! I bet nobody even knows their names. I had hoped to get a reply by @popcar2@programming.dev or @sims@lemmy.ml who seem to know plenty of them?!
I was talking about the RedPajama project who recreated the dataset of Meta’s LLaMA and proceedingly trained a model on it. And Apertus by the ETH Zürich. They also factored in ethics when compiling the dataset.
I made a post asking on !localllama: https://programming.dev/post/55905594
In case anyone knows about the existence of such models, please educate me over there!One more than i knew thank.
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.
Correct.
Mentioned this in the description of the post already.
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.
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.
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!
They just recently did something bad.
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?!
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.
@kbal @WorkingPie @hendrik Banning LLM contributions would be, at best, a symbolic gesture about a heavily politicized topic. For a team like debian, the concern should be about the quality of the contribution not what tooling was used.
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.
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?!
You should stop using Linux altogether if you want to be that much of an anti-AI snob. Linus is using LLMs on the kernel.
Already mentioned this in the post description. Purpose of the post is to find linux distros with an anti-AI policy.
So, it’s totally cool with you if the kernel that those anti-AI distros runs is being developed with AI?
Seems like a weird line to draw to me. But whatever. Enjoy whatever distro that is, if you find it.
GNU/Hurd maybe?
Less totally cool and more reaching for stuff that is at least somewhat doable. The Linux kernel is going to do what it wants and alternatives to it that provide the same level of functionality are just not really there at least in the areas that are important to me.
Gentoo?
I’m not sure why you think Debian is embracing AI
They took a nuteral stance on it
I wouldn’t call that neutral. Allowing it with no disclosure sounds like embracing but trying to hide it.
Please stop hyping up the power of text generators. LLMs are interesting, but far from the big scary boogeymen some people hype them as. The more afraid we are of them, the more power we are giving to them to actually control us.
It’s not due to them being a boogie man or not. LLMs have been created through the mass theft of others work and ethically I want no part of it. Asking for a distro without ai contribution is just doing what linux is best at. Providing choices to its users.
You are giving slop WAY too much power over your life, imo. Avoiding Linux entirely because you might accidentally touch some generated code is pathology.
Right? It’s hilarious how mentally ill these people are. It’s like being afraid of birds.
I’m no fan of slop but I’m not going to stab myself in the eyes to avoid looking at it
On the other hand: The more naive someone is, the more they’ll get manipulated and exploited. And ignoring problems doesn’t solve them either. It regularly makes everything even worse…
the other hand of what lol naive people have been getting manipulated since at least the 1970s long before LLMs
And that’s okay from your perspective?
Arch, Void, Gentoo, Chimera and Aeryn all have anti-AI policies.
Do you know where I can find the Arch policy?
I must have misremembered it because I also can’t find an official AI policy.
But the devs have banned LLMs in their issue tracker, at the very least:- https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/onnxruntime/-/work_items/18#note_460864
- https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/mkinitcpio-systemd-tool/-/work_items/3#note_503832
- https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/python-huggingface-hub/-/work_items/43#note_504464
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.
I am probably gonna ditch linux all together because the creator has been infected by genAI ( used LLM to heko debug, which is a big sin in my codebook ), so I have been trying NetBSD. I got it installed last night, but now I need to figure out how to get xfce4 to be default desktop environment I boot into.
Someone else listed a no-ai OS website, so I am gonna look into some of the other BSDs there as well.
You may as well abandon life altogether, because life has been “infected” with reality.
And reality is shapes by our actions. We work hard enough and we may and genAI forever best case scenario. Worst I’ll take is societal values equating genAI with CP levels of degeneracy and depravity.
You’re deluding yourself, friend, and will only cause you more pain in the long run. Eradicating AI is as likely as eradicating computers themselves. I mean, I’m not going to delete the dozens of models off my devices, and I’m just one person. Accept that innovation is here, and find a winnable battle to focus on.
The problem is I am optimistically delusional, so I firmly believe it is a winnable battle. I refuse to give up, even if it means becoming the poster person for the movement. By any means necessary, I believe us people ( the non genAI users not included because they ain’t people ) must win the war.
Also, you’re talking to a stubborn autistic 'tard, so it’ll be nearly impossible to change my stance on this due to my autistic passion level of hatred.
Oh, yeah, I get you. I’m the same way about the color purple. l won’t rest until the entire hue is eliminated from the electromagnetic spectrum, and anyone who uses it for anything, for any reason, is shunned as a degenerate.
You’re talking to a fellow obstinate. We can accomplish literally anything, no matter how outlandish or inane. I hate purple so much!!!
yes, obviously the solution to things being shit is to just give up and die, what wonderful advice.
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,
pmbootstrapis quite a good utility). If you take that route, I recommend OpenRC as not only is PMOS anti-AI, but so is OpenRC!Of COURSE there are two of them.
