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).
You could do the fork yourself (it is two or three git commands), but I am sorry you most probably won’t find competent people to work on it for free and enough keep it both current and secure, as this is a doomed endeavour. I guess it would be easier to hire a tripulation for a leaking ocean liner which is doomed to sink on its first journey.
And it becomed even more of a challenge if you want to use a web browser, as these things evolve not only in terms of many security fixes, but also in terms of features, and a browser version that is ten years old is not useful today for things like banking or online shopping, and most news sites won’t even display.
And I say that as somebody using a pretty conservative and minimalist stack.
And if you say you don’t need security - why not install a kernel from 2021 with a browser of the same age, and disconnect it from the Internet? If it is connected, it most likely needs security.
Why so defeatist? I like Linus too, but it’s not like he can do things literally nobody else can. The space is chock full of extremely talented software engineers, many of which agree with OP regarding AI.
Why capitulate immediately like this?
For 2011, the value of the Linux kernel, defined as redevelopment costs by paid developers, was estimated at 2.2 Billion Euros. It has gotten much larger since.
And much of the value is done by highly specialized experts. The type of people which write a draft of something like git in a few weekends.
And I do not know if you have ever worked at a large software project, but in order to work on it, you need to understand it somwhat, and in order to understand it, you have to do a noticeable fraction of the work of initial development.
To sum up: If you do not have hundreds of million Euros, or the equivalent in free time of extremely qualified volunteers, you do not have the resources to fork and maintain the kernel.
If you are serious with your suggestion, I’d start with a smaller kernel, which covers minimal requirements.
I am also not sure whether you are serious or trolling. Because some people use this difficult topic for trolling and sowing polarization. We see that in some discussions around Linux and AI/LLMs.
Added:
You might find the Haiku OS interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
But it is a hobby system, not one for daily computing tasks.
Sources say NetBSD is the way if your hardware supports it
Which is “better” - NetBSD or FreeBSD?
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.
There are projects like RedoxOS that are slop-free, but as it is not that mature, it’s quite a bit of work to set up. It’s also implemented in Rust which is not as bad as some other projects with it, but still not free of slop.
I’m not an expert, but here is the context: https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/10/13/netbsd-may-have-found-a-new-role-the-ai-free-foss-os/5302818
OpenBSD?
YES!
OpenBSD also has a no AI policy, though it is less ironclad than NetBSD. If OpenBSD maintainers start allowing AI I’ll probably move to NetBSD.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
You’re implying I am in need of security (I am not),
yes, yes you are. What are you even on abt, “not in need of security,” lmao what?
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.
“If the bad guys have guns, we need good guys with guns as well”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Technically “Linux” is also just a general reference to “Linus”, and not “Torvalds”, hence it’s not called “Torvalx”.
I was mostly joking, but I wasn’t specifically talking about a last name, not sure where you got that from.
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)
Switch to OpenBSD.
It’s comfy here
You might find this useful: https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware#operating-systems
TL;DR - There aren’t a ton of options, especially that are daily drivable on the desktop for most people.
There is this list as well but it doesn’t seem to consider the kernel, only the distro’s stance.
