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Can we please not? People are leaving Windows because it slaps AI to everywhere unnecessary
Use Debian
If you want what Ubuntu promised, use Fedora. If you learned a bit after trying Ubuntu, use Debian. If you tried Ubuntu and kinda miss the ease of Windows, use Mint. If you think all of these options sound way too practical, try anything but Arch.
If they get it right (opt in by default, respects privacy, appropriately sandboxed for security, clearly defined use case, etc.) then I can see how this could be useful.
But it’s a big if.
I still don’t understand how AI would be useful even if I owned the whole stack from the power station on up
People really have no idea what AI is. And in many cases those “AI features” are just machine learning. I’m currently running Ubuntu and I have several AI features running. One of them then is Handy.comptuer and it’s a really nice push to talk voice recognition software. I’m dictating this post with it and it’s awesome.
Another feature is image classifications integrated in Immich. It’s nice to have your personal photo library and all the pictures that you have ever taken classified so that you can search for “dog” or “hamster” or “John”. There are great text-to-speech programs out there. Everything is running locally and stuff like that is really useful to have in your OS. And it won’t boil the planet, the energy requirements are quite low.
Text to speech already existed and doesn’t need AI. Photos admittedly if I could have a sovereign version of Google photos that incorporates some of those features that was FOSS and offline, then ok maybe that’s something useful “AI” can do.
I’m reasonably tech literate though and the idea of even exploring if such a thing is possible seems like more pain than it’s even worth
I know that text to speech does work without AI, but the modern AI-based models are so much better.
One of the most popular Linux distributions is about to get an influx of AI features. As reported by Phoronix, Jon Seager, VP of engineering at Ubuntu developer Canonical, shared a blog post on Monday detailing plans to add AI features to the Linux distro over the next year. As the post states, the AI features “will come in two forms: first as a means of enhancing existing OS functionality with AI models in the background, and latterly in the form of ‘AI native’ features and workflows for those who want them.”
These features will range from accessibility tools like improved speech-to-text and text-to-speech to agentic AI features for tasks like troubleshooting or personal automation. According to Seager, Canonical will be prioritizing model transparency and local inference when adding these AI features. Behind the scenes, Canonical is also encouraging its engineers to use AI more, but Seager noted that “I will not be measuring people at Canonical by how much they use AI, but rather continue to measure them on how well they deliver.”
Seager goes on to add that AI features could potentially help new users navigate the “famously fragmented” Linux desktop ecosystem: “If we’re careful about how we employ LLMs in a system context, they could demystify the capabilities of a modern Linux workstation and bring them to a much wider audience.”
The idea sounds reasonable to me.
Of course, between idea and execution a lot can change. But as long they take some sane design decisions (opt-in, transparent, sandboxed, give the user freedom to use their own API or local models, etc), I’m fine with it