I have been using Linux for over 8 months now, and my primary distribution of choice was Debian.

Debian recently conducted a community vote on allowing AI contributions, and it ended up allowing responsible AI contributions.

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.

How did you react to Debian’s decision? Did you switch distros? Which one was your option, and why?

Also, when the Linux kernel itself allows AI commits, is there any practicality in a Linux distribution strictly limiting or restricting AI commits?

I have no serious usability issue with Debian now but am concerned about the use of AI even in my Linux distribution. Should I keep going with Debian or consider any other distribution, as I only have 8+ months of experience as a daily Linux user? I tried almost all Linux distros and am comfortable with everything except Void Linux and highly complex ones like Gentoo.

  • Arthur Besse ( cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ) English
    3·
    5 hours ago

    Are Anti-AI Linux distributions practical?

    It’s not possible to have a 100% no-LLM-coding-involved Linux distro anymore now that the kernel itself is welcoming LLM-assisted contributions, but it’s still possible to say that everything which the distro produces itself will not use AI.

    How can AI commits be responsible?

    What Debian means is: by reading what it produces and not just blindly accepting it but having humans review it carefully. The quality of LLM-assisted software is highly variable. Experienced people like Debian and Linux kernel developers are much less likely to publish very bad slop than inexperienced developers who are newly able to make a thing work well enough to ship it.

    I am concerned about the extent of Debian’s embrace of LLMs but I still have a lot more confidence in them than most other distros (especially small hardcore-anti-AI distro projects lacking sufficient developer capacity to even keep up with security updates).

    I expect we’ll be seeing lots more things like this non-upstreamable-because-AI hardware enablement and distros like Nura (formerly postmarketOS) will either either adopt more nuanced LLM policies or be forked.

    I am doubtful about if there will be any serious distros with hard LLM bans in a few years from now. But also, perhaps the bubble will have burst by then, so hosted inference won’t be so cheap and the use of LLMs will probably be quite different.

    the primary reason is AI is a thief

    This is not the primary reason for most people, I don’t think. I think the fact that it increases complexity while reducing human understanding is the biggest problem; it’s possible (easy even) now to produce mountains of good-enough-by-many-metrics source code which the person doing the prompting has very little comprehension of. The fact that it is also a plagiarism machine is far less of a problem than this. (There are a litany of other problems too of course, several others of which I would also rate as worse than the plagiarism aspect.)

  • Sina ( Sina@beehaw.org ) English
    1·
    5 hours ago

    Also, when the Linux kernel itself allows AI commits, is there any practicality in a Linux distribution strictly limiting or restricting AI commits?

    Upstream is unrestricted, unless you want to detach from upstream it’s hopeless.

    • schnurrito ( schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
      11·
      11 hours ago

      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…

      See also https://www.techdirt.com/2026/09/23/copyright-infringement-still-isnt-theft-even-when-a-microsoft-employee-says-it-is/

    • Hetare King ( HetareKing@piefed.social ) English
      5·
      11 hours ago

      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.

      • m532 ( m532@lemmy.ml ) 
        3·
        7 hours ago

        GPL wields the copyright system against itself, like a virus. The goal is the complete destruction of the copyright system and the liberation of all software.

          • m532 ( m532@lemmy.ml ) 
            1·
            2 hours ago

            This is the GPL’s trap card. When it gets undermined, the “copyright” system loses its credibility.

            That was the idea, at least. Seems like there’s people who double down on their belief in copyright in response. But that’s their own fault.

            The usual saying applies: “It’s easier for them to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism the copyright system.”

  • mildseason ( mildseason@sopuli.xyz ) 
    11·
    13 hours ago

    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.

  • hendrik ( hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ) English
    13·
    13 hours ago

    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.

  • cmnybo ( cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ) English
    34·
    16 hours ago

    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.

  • Mordikan ( Mordikan@kbin.earth ) 
    15·
    15 hours ago

    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.

  • Mercer ( Mercer@lemmy.zip ) 
    3·
    10 hours ago

    AI is an incredibly useful but morally dubious. The word responsible likely means technically responsible not morally. I personally wouldn’t change distro over this but you do you.

  • dusk ( dusk@piefed.social ) English
    16·
    16 hours ago

    “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.

  • cerement ( cerement@slrpnk.net ) 
    6·
    16 hours ago

    Most of it comes down to personally mitigating the damages:

    • start with ElementaryOS and Pantheon/Gnome, then decide which path you want to follow
    • if you’re hardcore, go for NetBSD or MirBSD or 9front/Plan9 instead of Linux
    • on the Linux side: ElementaryOS, Gentoo, Chimera Linux, AerynOS, and Nura/PostmarketOS all have strong LLM policies
      • along those lines: Gnome and Cosmic haven’t gone soft on AI the way KDE has
    • Starlight Network No-AI List is one jumping off point, but there are several other lists including repo-slopscore and Weird Little Guys
    • dusk ( dusk@piefed.social ) English
      6·
      16 hours ago

      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.

      • shrek_is_love ( shrek_is_love@lemmy.ml ) 
        1·
        15 hours ago

        I liked him a lot. I first learned about Jellyfin from his video just a few years ago. I would’ve bet money that Linus TT would be on such a list before Jeff Geerling. I don’t have a parasocial relationship or idolize YouTubers, but I’m definitely still disappointed. (Maybe I was a stupid fan, but now I’m just stupid 💀)

        • Alex ( stsquad@lemmy.ml ) 
          1·
          13 hours ago

          I do like Jeff’s videos, he comes across as a true engineering nerd. I find his SBC reviews to be pretty thorough and some of his other videos make for an interesting side quest on stuff he’s interested in.

          I certainly don’t view DeVaults purity list as the authority on if I should watch someone’s videos or not.

        • dusk ( dusk@piefed.social ) English
          2·
          15 hours ago

          Jeff never made sense to me, his videos seemed dodgy, the first one I saw he was jumping on the linus screwdriver silly hype train, but his fans just adored him, to the point I assumed some of them were drooling. I didn’t see much more of him over the years, so my view is definitely limited.