I’ll accept it if it’s FOSS
If that is something people want, then there will be distributions integrating AI tools as default configuration. But probably mostly open source solutions only. And most people maybe don’t want AI applications, so there will always be AI free distros available. As long as it is not proprietary and controlled by one company only, I don’t see any problem with integrating AI.
Personally, my (uneducated) opinion is that we already have plug-and-play functionality on a program level ie I can add an OpenAI api key to various programs and make them ‘smarter’. Since the Linux experience is often pretty piecemeal as is, this would be a solid enough approach for most.
In terms of AI being ingrained within a Desktop Environment, that seems harder for me to imagine… Like how the Office Suite has AI functionality, would the KDE suite of apps allow for cross-program functionality? Would this require a substantial change in system requirements for local processing? Would there be an open-source LLM hosted in the cloud for chat purposes that also mirrors the privacy expectations of the average Linux user?
I understand people’s apprehension towards Linux distros seemingly chasing the latest fad, but I think it’s also worth hypothesizing the alternative if AI and LLMs are here to stay/differentiate.
LLMs are big, so you either need a powerful PC to run them or use cloud services. Linux users tend to not be fans of either, so it’ll probably take a while before anything big happens.
Besides, for the things where an LLM actually makes sense (like a copilot-style code generator), there are already implementations.
I am a Debian user, and I can’t really say I am not a fan of “Big”. I have a laptop as my production machine but I also have as big a file server as I can afford. I would not want an AI that is part of my OS unless it is local. I do use ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, but only for non-critical functions.
AI based tools can be usefull.
If some of them are fully FOSS and light enough to be used locally I think that it’s going to arrive.
But in the same time I think it’s more an application level question :
- like LibreOffice with some LLM tools.
- or Gimp with some StableDiffusion capability.
- … you get the point :)
