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No-AI Linux Kernel Forks? (feddit.nl)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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Linus Torvalds, about AI, said that if people don't like it they can fork it. Does anyone know any linux kernel forks that attempt this? Getting rid of "tainted" commits, even if that would mean going back in time a few years?

I don't want to discuss the use of AI in the kernel. I am just curious and couldn't really find any forks (only the linus quote pops up on search engines).

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[–] 35 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

I think you're probably going to need to go back a few years if you really want an untainted kernel. Pretty sure there have been LLM assisted commits for at least two years. And some of those likely didn't have any indication. To be safe, you probably want to go back to at least 2023 if not 2022.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Are there any indications that AI other than the festering LLM-bubble ever added content to Linux?

    I don't need answers, I'm just interested in the question.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago* (5 children)

    I am not a kernel contributor, but my IDEs have local LLMs for line based predictions for quite a while already and I use that. So if the involvement of any LLM is already the mark, then I would be guilty in a lot of work I did over the last years.

    Personally I draw the line at accountability. If I contribute something I take responsibility and I (try to) make sure the quality is good. I expect the same from others. I don’t care how they got their result, as long as they can defend it.

    That’s also why I am not a big fan of “assisted by Claude” and similar markers. It takes away accountability. “Whoops sorry, the agent did that”. No, you let the agent do that and didn’t care enough to validate or fix it.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    And that's why a nuanced view to define what kinds of AI contribution are done with direct human involvement, oversight, and review to create high-quality code (yes, it is possible) and what kinds are problematic and dangerous is important. Both in defense of the Linux kernel project's position, and in criticism of it. Otherwise I feel like everyone on both sides is just going to be shouting past each other with nobody actually ever reaching the point of how we are realistically ever going to build reliable and maintainable software going forward in a world where the AI pandora's box has already been opened and and short of an absolute total war against the technology (which may be justified, but is not likely to happen and is not achievable or winnable from the efforts of a single project) it has been released into the wild and is not going away and people are not going to stop trying to use it.

    Public shaming of AI usage is a valid strategy against its adoption and possibly the most viable one we have, but plenty of people are completely immune to it and will continue to be. It's never going to stop it completely and maybe it's a wasted effort. At the end of the day, the work still needs to get done, and arguing about how exactly it gets done simply isn't getting any of the necessary work done.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    As someone who is pretty anti AI in general, this is my personal opinion on FOSS projects. I fully understand and support people forking FOSS projects that have an AI policy they disagree with, but the community is so small and overworked as is I worry about further fracturing. I'm not a kernel contributor, so as long as they are keeping the same or higher standards, I'm not going to complain about where the code came from. I think your comment about accountability is really important and something I agree with as well.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Afaik thats also Linux Torvalds stance. It's a tool, and it cannot be held responsible, that's always on you

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    And I rather agree there. Don't really care if you typed it in notpad without auto completion, or vibe coded it. I want you to understand your PR and be able to explain it.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    Honestly I'm leaning more and more towards advocating for people to use AI responsibly instead of outright rejecting it.

    Yes the environmental impact is insane, but I feel like that's mostly because they keep pushing it to do more and more. But I think we're well past the sweet spot of what work AI should take off our shoulders. Remove too much and you end up with Meat Proxies.

    Tho that only applies to things where only the result matters, like code. Pragmatic stuff, that's there to serve a specific purpose.

    Art is the exact opposite. The process matters, the struggles, the successes, the setbacks. It's a thing of passion, and that can never be truly replaced by a machine.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    Well, I guess it depends on your definition of AI here. Would a linear regression fitting a curve to inform decisions on allocation or scheduling count? I wonder if anyone has also tried to apply classifiers to commits.

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    • [–] 15 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

    Sources say NetBSD is the way if your hardware supports it

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    Which is “better” - NetBSD or FreeBSD?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    FreeBSD is more compatible. I've used it a bit. I like it. I wouldn't drop Linux for it however. I'm sure people have and are currently sneaking AI code into NetBSD and other projects. If you want an AI-free kernel, you'll need a time machine as much as that sucks. I'm not saying don't try out NetBSD. I wouldn't switch to it though. If you do though, more power to you. I wish FreeBSD had more of the software I use on Linux. I also wish my wi-fi card worked with it.

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    • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago

    I've been thinking along the same lines, actually. I'd personally love to switch to a no-AI kernel fork.

    It seems someone has at least done the work to find the last commit not tainted by slop. So that's one tiny tiny baby step in the direction of such a fork, I guess.

    Honestly, I'd happily sacrifice the newest/latest features of Linux. I could just stick with version 6.16.7 (which according to the above link is slop-free), except that some fairly impactful vulnerabilities have been discovered in Linux lately.

    I use Gentoo and configure/build my own kernel manually, so I could also theoretically do some research and see how many of the vulnerabilities that are actively a problem in 6.16.7 are in parts of the kernel that I explicitly disable anyway.

    I'm no C developer, though, let alone Linux kernel hacker. If I had the chops, I might honestly be considering making a fork myself right now.

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    [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    I'm in the way of getting it off the ground, though I still don't know where to branch off from the main branch. First known AI slop contribution?

    What should be the name? While "zilix" would be an obvious one, I want to avoid the ego issue Linus Torvalds have developed. Name it "Rockhopper" maybe? Or some other species of penguin? Leave the penguin branding in the past with Linus?

    But I know that I'll try to reach out to contributors of Linux who are dissatisfied with the current direction of the kernel. And that I will try to lobby some memory safe API into the kernel (SafePosix?), meaning null terminated strings will be the no longer preferred alternative, for backwards compatibility only, though some functions may still return a null terminated string for simplicity sake, but now alongside with a length indicator.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Would zilix not just be a reference to ziltoid the omniscient? Or is your username based on a part of your real name? Otherwise i dont see why you'd develop ego issues over a name that isn't yours.

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    • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    I don't think there are any forks at the moment. I've been looking into alternatives and Ironclad seems pretty interesting. Aside from banning slop code, they also have an OS you can download as an .iso.

    The issue is that there's barely any information in the entire damn Internet about this thing. I managed to run the OS on qemu without any issues, but I got stuck afterwards on a text-only interface since I have no damn clue of how commands work here.

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    [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    If you're concerned about it being a security vulnerablility use the Linux LTS kernel (I think version 6.9.5 or something along those lines)

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    [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago

    Sadly the issue is there is no community around any other particular fork. Technically, there are many forks, mostly for hardware / distro reasons. If you wanted to be sure there are no “AI / LLM” contributions in the kernel, 5.15 has an epoch around February. The other series but I’m not sure. I’d personally like to see a reset probably further back.

    I looked into this a few months ago to see how I’d go about addressing it but the hope was that they would at least leave the ”Assisted By” tag to track these types of commits… but sadly I was wrong. Sadly, the Linux kernel and the community around it are no longer trustworthy.

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    [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Switch to OpenBSD.

    It's comfy here

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    [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Hate to break it to you. But I actually would find it hard to trust a kernel or distro that doesn't use AI today. No one has the staffing levels or funding to keep up with the rate of AI identified vulnerabilities.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Agree. If bad actors are using models to exploit any possible vulnerability, how could developers possibly keep up without modern tools?

    I know this is fuckAI but still. It kinda feels like people want to write a book by hand when a computer is available. A noble pursuit but not a popular one.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    You're implying I am in need of security (I am not), and that security without AI is not achievable. I say hogwash if the user is willing to make adjustments to their digital hygiene.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Of course you need security, you do not want some AI spy agents be installed on your computer nor or your phone. And the only way to prevent that is to have a good security (or to go fully offline).

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    The few devices I have that do connect to the internet are turned off 95% of the time, my router is turned off 90% of the time. My laptop has internet disabled through hardware switch most of the time. The internet connection I do have is incredibly slow (but enough) and download stuff I need in chunks (mostly documentation and movies and whatever) I run NetBSD on an encrypted drive. Most of the data on it I would want to protect is programs and poetry I write and art I create, and maybe some budgeting documents, but I wouldn't exactly have a crisis if it somehow ended up in someone's hands. You'd need to be a pretty damn good hacker to get in here, and even if you're inside getting stuff back is very slow and sporadic. I mean, I'm sure it's still possible, I've heard stories of cops getting data through wall sockets measuring the power rate, but I don't feel the need to apply slop-heavy patches.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    I second you because sometimes the added security measure does nothing. If I run a system in my HTPC and in no way it's connected to the internet, why does it need network protection where it doesn't even need a network stack? I have every reason to keep it slop-free instead.

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