Been a long time Debian user but with the recent AI decision I am planning on moving on so anyone have an anti-AI recommendations? I understand its being used in the kernel as well but are there any distros taking a full anti-AI approach to the parts of the code they control?
Since folks seem a little confused on what I am referring to here is the mailing list page regarding the use of gen ai without disclosure vote: https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00360.html
Phoronix article on it: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Votes-Responsible-AI-Use


They don’t care. They’re hypocrites, filled with irrational hatred. Card carrying members of the “AI Hate Boner” club and that’s all they care about. Their hatred for this narrow facet of technology gives their lives meaning.
Oh my god, you cannot be serious.
Get off the cross; we need the wood.
You may not have noticed, but this is literally a thread about people who want to change operating systems because of the tools the creators use to develop it.
That’s like wanting to move out of your house because you found out that the builders used Ryobi or DeWalt power tools, instead of defunct manual tools by ‘Spear & Jackson’ or ‘Klein Tools,’ because in your mental illness, you object to the power tools that are taking jobs from human hands, completely ignoring the fact that there is still a human in the process, operating the tool. Or you argue that the power tools ‘stole’ all the knowledge of how to be used by the manual tools that came before them. Or whatever hilarious excuse you’ve made up to justify boycotting innovation.
It’s lunacy.
Nah, that’s a bad analogy.
It’s more like wanting to move out of your house because you found out that the builders were in fact subcontracting out their work to unaccredited randos off the street who made a bunch of building code violations and don’t truly understand how to build structurally sound buildings. It’s not about power tools. It’s about the competence of the builder themselves.
And you’re also handwaving away the very real ethics and licensing issues that stem from using models that were trained by scraping all of GitHub without any consideration for project licenses whatsoever, in addition to potential legal issues down the road, stemming from said usage.
It’s not lunacy. It’s a real thing.
Your analogy doesn’t track because there’s no one new being introduced into the process, just the same people using newer tools.
There’s zero ethics and licensing issues, in my humble opinion, any more than there are ethics/licensing issues when a builder watches documentaries on public broadcasting to learn how to build. The knowledge is ingested and incorporated, not copied and redistributed. However, I’ve argued with enough anti-AI zealots to know I’ll never convince you otherwise, so I won’t even try.
It is very real lunacy. Time will tell, I’m just trying to save people the heartache ahead of time. It’s likely a lost cause, but at least I tried.
@Epp @gravitas_deficiency Oh, you’re being an absolute prick to everyone in order to help them? How selfless of you, surely no one appreciates the sacrifices you make to help others.
Thanks, Scott, I’m glad you recognize my contribution. Your opinion, specifically, means a lot to me.
Edit: you’ve had your account for four years, you’ve made a grand total of three comments, and one of them was to chastise me? A third of your Lemmy existence has been devoted to me… I’m touched.
@Epp Wow you don’t care about my opinion so much you had to go digging through my profile to tally my lack of activity so you could attempt some kind of weak counter response.
So on top of glazing AI, you’re also clearly not that bright.
I clicked your name, curious why you used a seemingly real name - all of that info was immediately gleaned with a cursory glance.
“Digging through my profile” - talk about not being that bright…