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Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 3 days ago by misk@piefed.social to c/linux@programming.dev

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[-] SuperPengato@scribe.disroot.org 134 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago

Private companies are fine as long as they are run be sensible people.

The issue with Canonical is that they have been shit for a long time. They are being proped up by Microsoft and a legacy that ended 15 years ago.

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 36 points 2 days ago

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

[-] OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago

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

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Red Hat has been all over AI for a while

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

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[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 5 points 2 days ago

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

[-] BrilliantBadger@piefed.ca 3 points 2 days 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

[-] xep@discuss.online 10 points 2 days ago

Why not use Debian?

[-] quick_snail@feddit.nl 16 points 2 days ago

Does anyone use Ubuntu anynore?

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

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago

You'd be surprised

[-] misk@piefed.social 5 points 2 days 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 1 points 2 days 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.

[-] Muffi@programming.dev 47 points 2 days ago

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

[-] BrilliantBadger@piefed.ca 22 points 2 days ago

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 5 points 2 days ago

Kudos to its little brother, Ironfox.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago

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 14 points 2 days ago

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

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

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 days ago

Yup, that’s why I’m still looking.

[-] woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days 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.

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 54 points 3 days ago

Not like we need more reasons to not use Ubuntu.

[-] username_1@programming.dev 26 points 2 days ago

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 22 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 11 points 2 days ago

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 2 points 2 days 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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[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago

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

[-] ComicalMayhem@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

How will this affect Mint OS?

[-] doc_rootbeer@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Maybe more people will just run the Debian Edition

[-] Keshara@piefed.blahaj.zone 30 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 hours ago

Based on what they did with snap I wouldn't hold your breath

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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)

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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 sensible.

[-] rbos@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago

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

[-] aichan@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago

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

[-] rbos@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

it's pretty legendary

[-] e461h@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

That would make some good reality tv

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 10 points 2 days ago

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 12 points 2 days 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.

[-] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 5 points 2 days ago

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

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 4 points 2 days ago

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

[-] misk@piefed.social 2 points 2 days 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 days 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 days 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).