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.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
There are a few distros that do reject all AI code, which you can find in these two lists:
https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html
https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#linux-based (under the 'Alternative Linux-based operating systems' section).
There will never be an AI free Linux distro again since it's allowed in the kernel. I would certainly prefer to use a distro that doesn't allow vibe coded programs though. That junk is unmaintainable and will be abandoned when the creator can no longer afford the tokens.
Most slopcode projects are abandoned and deleted within months of release – “Of the 120 unique repos, 32 were maintained and 88 were abandoned.”
maybe that could be because people do a small project then get bored and doesn't apply to something like kernels?
Let's see if the Kernel is abandoned in a few months, seems likely
OpenBSD.
Come learn about computo.
Be free with us.
i love your mailing list, i learn so much about literally everything every single day from misc@
thief
If you advocate for further expansion of "copyright" oppression, you deserve microsoft windows.
This. So much.
I am old enough to remember many people on the Internet questioning the entire concept of copyright and reacting to it with free licensing, defense of torrent sites, founding Pirate Parties.
Now I read that the primary reason to reject AI is that it is a "thief"??? In the era I described above, someone wrote a song with the lyrics: copying is not theft, stealing a thing leaves one less left, copying it makes one thing more, that's what copying's for…
Copying.... is fuuuuuuuuun 🎶🎵
Copyleft is a hack of copyright that ensures rights to users of software that you wouldn't have if there was no copyright. Software is different from other creative works like music and books in that it does computing. Sharing a binary file freely isn't enough - you need the source code to keep it maintained or change it to your will (through collaborative efforts). You prevent others withholding the source code via that copyrighted license.
You can reject the unreasonable sentences of copyright infringement, the illegality of breaking locks on your own hardware, or the long copyright terms while still promoting copyright for copyleft's sake. Companies lobbies for those laws to prevent "stealing', throwing people in jail or fining them into oblivion - are they going to undo all that? Can I share Disney films without going to jail now?
while still promoting copyright for copyleft’s sake.
What the hell.
Copyleft means "the absence of copyright", not "copyright wielded by radlibs".
Words have different usages among different groups of people. Wikipedia seems to support my use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
TIL radlibs' holy scripture smears copyleft. The page reads like it was written by a bourgie copyright advocate.
I should have known, radlibs' holy scripture was founded by ancaps after all.
That's many new words for me, seems some groups of people also have no usage of words that others use!
I value software freedom; basically being in control of your own computing. I dislike others taking my code and then denying their users the same freedoms they enjoyed. If not for that I could do without most of Copyright as it is today.
You don't get what copyright is at all. The bourgie propaganda seems to have convinced you that "copyright protects you from copyright and if it weren't there nothing would protect you from copyright"
For some people, it's easier to imagine the end of the world, than to imagine the end of ~~capitalism~~ the copyright system.
GPL may call itself "copyleft", but legally it is dependent on copyright to be enforceable. In the first place, the whole point of licenses like GPL is to ensure that when people take from the commons, they also give back to the commons. The way AI gains its ability to generate shitty code undermines this, and so is ideologically very much at odds with Linux and the wider FOSS world.
Copyright is a deprivation of freedom, and the GPL comes using this rules to turn around them. I won't defend copyright. AI comes with more important problems, such as ecology, and creating monster private companies that have far too much power.
The tool in itself can really be usefull when well used. Many people use it and get nice results. Many people abuse it, and many people abuse themselves with it. It is true with a hammer too. I don't think "hammer-free" is a feature, even if their are many domain in which I don't see the point of using a hammer (and so "made with a hammer" isn't a feature either).
Also, I can't find any example in history of a technology that was successfully banned despite being usefull. Some have been regulated, such as nuclear industries, but that was not perfect and needed a continuous and hard strugle. The strict "no-AI" movement has already lost its battle, at most we could get regulations, maybe...
The thing is, if all other things remain the same, an absence of copyright will also be used by the wealthy and powerful to further enrich and empower themselves and as a tool of oppression.
From the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition:
#34 War is good for business.
#35 Peace is good for business.
You cannot have internally consistent, principled view on copyright without also having a compatible view on the economy. And even then, the economy needs to come first; you cannot start destroying load-bearing pillars, no matter how ugly, without first getting everyone out of the house.
The tool in itself can really be usefull when well used. Many people use it and get nice results.
The way I see it, there are two kinds of people: those to whom AI is utterly useless because it just ends up taking more time and have them burn through their cognitive endurance faster, and those to whom it would be irresponsible to let them use it, because it would prevent them from finding better solutions for the busywork they're letting the AI do, and they just end up creating a lot of needless maintenance overhead.
But more importantly, being "useful" to certain individuals is not the same as being good for society. Which brings us back to it undermining licenses like the GPL, which would further enrich and empower the already advantaged.
Also, I can’t find any example in history of a technology that was successfully banned despite being usefull.
CFCs? Asbestos? The bans on them aren't perfectly enforced, but nevertheless, the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking and the number of people dying of asbestos-related lung cancer is reducing, so they do have value.
The strict “no-AI” movement has already lost its battle
Even if it were true, that would be no reason to stop trying or to stop saying the truth: No matter useful you experience it as being, you are causing harm. To yourself, to the field, to society.
I've been using Debian for a long time and honestly, I'm not going to worry about this too much as of today. We got that decision, yes. But I don't think I've seen any consequences, yet. And I always try to judge people by what they actually do. Less so by what they say.
I say that the last word hasn't been said yet. On this whole AI thing. We still got many Linux people who don't really appreciate AI. The entire community isn't really fond of it. We got people who say there isn't a way to make use of it responsibly. I have a hunch there's more to this story. But only time will tell. Until then I'm going to continue using Debian, just like I have for the past 10-15 years. I trust the community distributions, they faced other challenges before. And usually they're not half bad at facing challenges and ultimately doing the right thing.
Doesn't have to be easy. Sometimes we're headed the wrong direction for a while. But what matters IMO is the result. And I'm positive they'll find some way to deal with this. I don't think AI fits Debian's identity at all. Would be a big surprise to me if they don't realize it as well.
What is this responsible? How can AI commits be responsible? There are thousands of reasons to not use AI, and the primary reason is AI is a thief.
I feel like you aren't actually asking a legitimate question and are just trying to soapbox, but this is covered by Debian here: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2026/08/msg00005.html
As far as what the consequences of failing to follow that policy is, it would be covered under the Debian code of conduct: https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct_interpretation.html
NOTE: I am not a Debian user. I just performed a basic search to find the answer to that question.
Some links to anti-ai digital things:
https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html
https://codeberg.org/brib/slopfree-software-index
https://www.newinlinux.com/ai-free-linux-distros-open-source-operating-systems/
f-droid repository: https://izzyondroid.org/docs/general/AppInclusionPolicy/#ai-policy
"How did you react to Debian’s decision?"
I deleted it, debian was thankfully not my main, just a backup/something of interest.
The 'vote' itself seemed dodgy, every option was going to ai in some form, or another.
Void isn’t too difficult and is documented well.
I strongly dislike AI but am not a purist. Linux is already a no-go for purists and good luck with the alternatives.
I think the kernel’s policy on AI use is reasonable. As long as a distro or a package isn’t obvious slop and they have a clear policy, I’m okay using it or continuing to use it.
In the meantime, while I mostly use mainstream distros like Fedora and Arch, I’m quite happy that distros like Void exist so that if mainstream Linux ever takes a direction I disagree with, I have alternatives.
In the end, keep perspective. A distribution like Debian allowing for responsible AI use is not the same as the vibe-coded slop that is Omarchy.
documented well.
I'm gonna disagree on this point, I tried Void both on a VM and a spare SSD and I found the documentation was lacking. Or in the case of getting pipewire working I had to go to Reddit to find a workaround as none of the official ways to set it up worked on my systems. And it was far from the last time I had to find an undocumented solution to an issue I was facing.
I really like the idea of a completely independent distro purpose built instead of just "scraping the mold off" existing distros. But I had enough headaches with Void that I ended up on Artix, which mostly has worked out the same as Endeavour/Arch which I was using previously.
Hopefully I can try again in the future and have a better time, since I do applaud the developers for multiple reasons.
Just try to install it and use it for 1 week, and then you know the pain.
Today I tried VoidLinux once again, and after hours of trying to enable audio, I failed and finally built Arch from root. 😐
I have it on an old laptop, running Void, that I use every day for ripping physical media. I play all the ripped CD audio back while I rip the next one. I’m far from a Linux power user and I have zero issues. It’s an old ThinkPad and it kinda just works. Maybe I lucked out hardware wise.
after hours of trying to enable audio, I failed
For me running pipewire as a service even with the aid of wireplumber didn't work at all.
I had pipewire as an autostart script in KDE for it to work. ONLY that worked, not even launching it manually from the terminal worked.
Some of us learned how to code in the first place, and didn't write overly complicated spaghetti code full of vulnerabilities for the AI to find.
https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002#texte
The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices. We enourage [sic] our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI assitance[sic], but do not require them to do so.
Sure but why?
the primary reason is AI is a thief.
That's the least important reason to not use AI. All property is theft, especially copyright!
There is a difference between people using AI to help write/maintain code that they understand, and slopcoding unmaintainable vibe projects.
the only good to come of it is the destruction of the concept of intellectual property, the tools of capital won't serve us
Most of it comes down to personally mitigating the damages:
Weird little guys is an interesting read, I was surprised to find Jeff Geerling there, I always thought he was just a really crappy youtuber, with really stupid fans. I was half expecting to find Linus SebastiDouche on the list afterwards.
AI is a tool. You already trust the developers to build an operating system with the tools available.
From the Debian announcement
The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices.
It's quite clear they don't allow vibe coding. As you say, the kernal itself allows AI contributions in a similar way.
If you're worried about the ethical aspects of AI then you'll probably have to move to NetBSD. If you're only worried about quality this is a non issue.
Trust is 3 parts; authenticity, competance and empathy. Trust is broken if any of those are insufficient.
If others believe AI creation and AI use hurts people then leaving that unaddressed makes one appear to lack empathy.
"Quality of code" ultimately boils down to judging how it may effect people (reading it, changing it, using the software it compiles to). To worry about code quality is only to care about people. Only caring sometimes is inconsistent - it questions their character.