The first problem, as with many things AI, is nailing down just what you mean with AI.
The second problem, as with many things Linux, is the question of shipping these things with the Desktop Environment / OS by default, given that not everybody wants or needs that and for those that don’t, it’s just useless bloat.
The third problem, as with many things FOSS or AI, is transparency, here particularly training. Would I have to train the models myself? If yes: How would I acquire training data that has quantity, quality and transparent control of sources? If no: What control do I have over the source material the pre-trained model I get uses?
The fourth problem is privacy. The tradeoff for a universal assistant is universal access, which requires universal trust. Even if it can only fetch information (read files, query the web), the automated web searches could expose private data to whatever search engine or websites it uses. Particularly in the wake of Recall, the idea of saying “Oh actually we want to do the same as Microsoft” would harm Linux adoption more than it would help.
The fifth problem is control. The more control you hand to machines, the more control their developers will have. This isn’t just about trusting the machines at that point, it’s about trusting the developers. To build something the caliber of full AI assistants, you’d need a ridiculous amount of volunteer efforts, particularly due to the splintering that always comes with such projects and the friction that creates. Alternatively, you’d need corporate contributions, and they always come with an expectation of profit. Hence we’re back to trust: Do you trust a corporation big enough to make a difference to contribute to such an endeavour without amy avenue of abuse? I don’t.
Linux has survived long enough despite not keeping up with every mainstream development. In fact, what drove me to Linux was precisely that it doesn’t do everything Microsoft does. The idea of volunteers (by and large unorganised) trying to match the sheer power of a megacorp (with a strict hierarchy for who calls the shots) in development power to produce such an assistant is ridiculous enough, but the suggestion that DEs should come with it already integrated? Hell no
One useful applications of “AI” (machine learning) I could see: Evaluating logs to detect recurring errors and cross-referencing them with other logs to see if there are correlations, which might help with troubleshooting.
That doesn’t need to be an integrated desktop assistant, it can just be a regular app.
Really, that applies to every possible AI tool. Make it an app, if you care enough. People can install it for themselves if they want. But for the love of the Machine God, don’t let the hype blind you to the issues.
You’re getting a lot of flack in these comments, but you are absolutely right. All the concerns people have raised about “AI” and the recent wave of machine learning tech are (mostly) valid, but that doesn’t mean AI isn’t incredibly effective in certain use cases. Rather than hating on the technology or ignoring it, the FOSS community should try to find ways of implementing AI that mitigate the problems, while continuing to educate users about the limitations of LLMs, etc.
Oh, that’s very interesting. I knew about flak in the military context, but never realized it was the same word used in the idiom. The idiom actually makes a lot more sense now.
So aside for a few wording and technical issues, something stuck out to me. Using “special” to refer to neurodivergence is a bit problematic and potentially dogwhistley because of the historical contexts it’s been used in to dismiss and look down on people. And even if it wasn’t, it’s a bit ambiguous; can someone who feels that they are in touch with their “spiritual side” consider themselves to have a “special brain”?
If you’re wondering about neurodivergence, probably better to just ask “Are you neurodivergent?” rather than using euphemisms.
The word is complicated but for sure, I may rephrase that. Not sure if this will mess up the results though, it may create a second question out of it.
How do you think the OP is supposed to know that “SDDM” is the issue to look up? You don’t get to enforce another person’s effort. If all you want to provide is "you’re looking for ‘SDDM,’ that would provide help and empower them without sounding like you’re biting the newbie for not knowing everything.
Yes. I would assume that the problem is in X11 or Wayland before thinking it could be SDDM, frankly. But even then, googling “Linux login screen” doesn’t immediately reveal SDDM to be the point of concern.
I’m not moving any goalposts at all. I’m expressing how inexperience and bad assumptions can make one’s searching unfruitful through no fault of their own. That’s all I’ve ever been saying.
Ah, you made an edit. Yeah, “kde login rotation” does, but “EndeavourOS login rotation” gives you no results mentioning SDDM. Giving people the benefit of the doubt costs you nothing over assuming that they’re lazy, and the added bonus is that you don’t sound like a jerk.
When you search for a problem like this one, often the results with helpful answers are on forums. These wouldn’t exist if no one ever asked their question on a forum.
To put it another way, google doesn’t create any content. That’s what we’re here to do instead.
I have no problem with questions on forums, sometimes I ask them myself, but I think that if you expect people to try to answer your question, people should be able to expect you to have tried looking for an answer yourself.
I don’t know about other people, but it’s way easier to google something than to ask a question and then wait for the answer. I’m not OP, but if I’ve asked a question, it’s only because I’ve exhausted my ability to find the answer on its own.
Sometimes people like community conversation; it often gets to the heart of the issue better than parsing a semi-related post from 12 years ago, and it allows back-and-forth discussion to get details and drill down issues.
On top of that, redundancy for technical issues is never something we should reject.
What is the harm, to you or anyone else, when someone makes a forum their first resort, instead of last? If having people ask questions here that aren’t “good questions” according to you is bothering you, perhaps you are the problem.
I support this idea, and based on the things I read here, it seems to me that different cultures have different norms for asking a question, and that’s a good thing, but can create not so pleasant social situations here in the internet
Well, there was zero effort documented in the post.
You’re not their teacher. It’s not your job to decide how much effort they’ve put forth, or to grade whether or not that is sufficient.
Take a look at Ubuntu trying to teach newcomers how to ask a question.
And if they documented their research process, you’d say “tldr just ask the question.” Stop trying to be paternalistic and gatekeepy. Just answer or don’t.
Now we have millions of useless posts being archived like this one.
The archives! Why won’t anyone think of the archives!?
If we have room for comments like yours in the archives then we have room for legitimate questions by beginners in there too. Your post history shows a significant amount of deleted comments and downvotes. I bet they were all very productive and helpful comments for the archives, right?
The goal of Ubuntu’s help forum is to solve users’ problems efficiently and effectively. That goal is better achieved if questions are posed in certain optimal ways.
The goal of Lemmy is for people to have discussions (like this one! ;). That goal is not better achieved with well posed questions.
Then offer education or ignore the post. You know what’s easier than OP googling the question? You not responding to OP if you don’t have anything of value to add. You’re here with a passive aggressive “let me Google that for you” bullshit attitude yet YOU’RE upset at OP for not being better at searching for their answers?
I agree people should put more effort into trying to figure it out on their own and learning how to ask good questions but the tone of your comments is more detrimental to the quality of these communities than a “stupid question” ever will be.
This is why X11 is better. I’d rather have settings like this in a text file that I can copy over to my next machine than have to navigate a UI that will change on a different DE or the next upgrade.
Backwards compatibility, portability, and text-based interfaces are a virtue.
X config files aren’t “hacky scripts”, they are fundamentally more powerful, customizable, usable, and future-proof. Xrandr is a powerful and capable interface with applications across the system.
When Wayland adopts these kinds of powerful interfaces with decades of refinement I’ll switch to it. I don’t want to keep track of whether my DE uses wlroots or gnome or plasma and their independent/redundant/feature-lacking randr alternatives. Randrs should be more fundamental to the display operation than the DE. Wayland is fundamentally hacky and broken.
Edit: thank you all for the discussion. I’d like to clarify a point. I don’t just want a text file with configuration settings that implement features that I need to beg/bother the devs for. They are likely to have better things to do and it might not be a priority for them. I want access to powerful tools via the configuration files that I can make do pretty much anything if I read the documentation. Xrandr is such a tool. I don’t want setting for a feature that has to be baked into the DE which I have to beg to have implemented and which will be implemented differently across different DEs. I want flexible, dynamic, modular tools.
I am serious, and I’ll tell you exactly what will change my mind. I need real tools instead of “upgrades” that have less functionality and are less usable. If Wayland (or whatever comes next) can deliver on functionality, I’ll sing its praises. For now I’m on X.
Yeah that difference in configuration definitely makes it so much better, it completely outweighs the fact that Wayland does proper multi-monitor VRR, fractional scaling, HDR and much more.
I once had an old TV that I used as a monitor that had 1027p worth of pixels instead of 1080p. Auto detection tools said it was 1080p. With xrandr I was able to modify the output to 1027p so I didn’t lose the edges of the display to the TV’s broken forced overscan design. Could you do that with Wayland?
Edit: Here are the problems with you “Wayland isn’t good enough” people.
First, you don’t use Wayland, so you don’t even know if it’s fixed whatever weird issue you encountered with it before or if it supports a niche use case, for example.
Second, Wayland won’t get good enough for you until you start using it and reporting bugs. You think X11 was a bed of roses when it first started? Or do you think they bumped the version number 11 times for fun?
Good to know that this has been implemented in your favorite DE! Considering how Wayland often implements things, it’s probably implemented on the DE-level, leading to a fractured configuration ecosystem. Being implemented in Wayland is different from being implemented in some of the DEs that use Wayland.
edit: if I’m wrong about that, and it is implemented in Wayland itself, please continue to correct me!
First, you don’t use Wayland, so you don’t even know if it’s fixed whatever weird issue you encountered with it before or if it supports a niche use case, for example.
Bingo. So many complaints I’ve seen about Wayland have been from Nvidia users who tried it three years ago when the driver support was beyond fucked. I get Linux development moves slow sometimes but holy shit…
You can’t be this stupid, Wayland also uses a config file, you just have a GUI button to copy the configs from inside your session to the login screen. Or do you think the button recompiles the login screen with a different configuration?
I never configured anything on X with a DE, let it be KDE, Gnome or Cosmic, but configure everything with config files I can just copy on sway. It has nothing to do with X or Wayland, but the DE/WM you use.
That’s kind of my point. Something like randr is more fundamental than the DE, and its configuration shouldn’t be fractured by being DE-dependent. I personally don’t like DEs at all, and like the ability to control a more minimal system.
In Wayland, the compositor is the window server ( the equivalent of Xserver ). What you are looking for has to be a feature of the compositor and it is.
As others have said below, wlroots based compositors offer wlr-randr. There is also gnome-randr. For KDE, there is Kscreen-doctor. For X ( the window server being used by SDDM here ), there is xramdr.
Now, some people may see it as a problem that we have multiple Wayland implementations. I am mostly not fighting that battle. I will say that I hope these are not the same people that winge about systemd though and push for alternate init systems. I hope nobody that thinks MUSL is cool Is clinging to X11.
I would prefer that there was a common configuration standard for this stuff on Wayland. It will probably come eventually. Maybe as part of the freedesktop.org stuff.
Generally, I believe the Linux ecosystem has been stronger in areas where there has been competition between implementations ( even compilers ). I hope that Wayland will be one of those areas. As the core problems get fixed, the pace of innovation will increase. I believe we are already seeing that. There are more examples every day of things Wayland can do that X11 cannot. Let’s hope for more of that.
Thanks for pointing out that in this case the DM is using X regardless of whatever graphical environment gets loaded when the user logs in. This really is a moot point/discussion. I’m still glad I raised it to get perspectives like yours.
You’re right that I should play around with wlroots a bit more. It’s been a while, personally. Mostly because it’s been a while since I’ve had time to just play around with my system. My life is at a point that it looks like I’ll have that free time soon, for better or for worse.
I’ll note that I do like alternative init systems for diversity and competition and because systemd was very hungry and rigid. An init system is also a bit more fundamental to system stability than a display server, so I think it’s reasonable to be critical of systemd and Wayland for contradictory reasons. Systemd has also come a very long way in the past decade plus. I have also seen it learn from the other ideas implemented in its competition, mirroring your argument. Diversity and unification are not at odds with each other, but are different parts of the same cycle of improvement.
You left a very gracious reply so let’s not fight.
I see a certain amount of irony in the overlap between the group of people ranting that Wayland has too many implementations and the group demanding more implementations of everything else. So that was my point.
Certainly we can agree though that there is nothing wrong with demanding more of both.
One my favourite new distros, Chimera, uses both Wayland and dinit (and Turnstile ).
I am interested to see where the diversity that Wayland provides goes actually. Have you seen this?
Thanks for the leads and the good conversation. I have found that being an idiot in public and then deescalating is one of the fastest ways to gather information.
Correct. Unfortunately, it’s something that each desktop environment or window manager has to implement themselves. But all the button is doing is moving some config files around, so you can probably do some digging to figure out what it’s copying to where.
Yeah, I’ve largely figured out how to change all these settings from configs for myself, just always on the lookout for a nice gui. I’m slowly working to make a Linux experience I can install for my relatives that makes the transition from crapware Windows relatively painless.
XDG_SESSION_THEME=KDE got my hyprland config to work on everything except the cursor (other than in Firefox/steam for some reason). Took me way too long to find the old reddit post that had this tip, so I hope it helps!
Is this when the screen is locked or when you’re logged out? Those are two different things and I suspect it’s the latter. That’s probably sddm and I suspect it can be fixed by using Wayland with it. Should be some option in /etc/sddm.conf or so.
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