I’ve had several occasions in my life where I’ve tried to switch to Linux only to run into hardware incompatibilities that would have taken me man-months to solve. Thanks to GPT my primary personal PC, home media and project server is now running Linux and fully functional. I’ve got Jellyfin, NextCloud, Navidrome and Joplin all happy. I’ve also been able to wipe an obsolete MacOS off my 2017-era Macbook Pro and it’s happily running Mint.
There’s a deep irony in Windows being enshittified by AI, while the same AI makes Linux about a billion times more usable. Now I have a leftover Windows micro-PC running a local LLM model, so I can be less dependent on GPT, as long as time isn’t a factor…
I feel you. This really resonates with me cuz I have 100% the same story. I had been trying to switch to Linux from Windows pre-AI and it was good, but a really steep learning curve, with everything taking 20+ internet searches to accomplish basic tasks. The thing that finally forced my hand came at just the right time. I had lived the last 10 years of my life using OneNote as my second brain. When I saw Windows 11 and Copilot coming, I knew I had to get out fast. I bit the bullet and paid OpenAI to vibe code my Ubuntu server, which is now self-hosting over 20 different services, including my new Obsidian-based second brain. I’m 100% off Windows, 98% off corporate cloud infrastructure and onto my own self-hosted services, canceled my OpenAI account, and fully on Linux-based PCs. I have a subpar privacy-based AI service (really a fair trade) that enables me to keep it all up and running. I’m no Linux expert and I have to rely on AI a lot, but man, life has just been so much better, and I couldn’t have done it without the AI that both pushed me to it and enabled me to do it.
I have Bazzite and couldn’t be happier. Hate that I didn’t switch sooner lol
Took me a week or two to understand the basics. Really isn’t much, tbh.
I have used AI a little for Linux adaptation but I do want to caution overuse since it’ll sometimes give you really bad advice, like regarding important dependencies and such. Sometimes it cites info for a wrong distro or outdated info, so it’s not so much made up BS, just bad search results essentially.
Drop chats, use a harness. Include somewhere the procedure instructions to always look up documentation before crafting the command. Add instructions somewhere what dependencies you tolerate. Then it’s really good.
Once your tasks get larger, you need additional checks.
Man, this makes me very proud of myself. I switched to Linux 10 years ago when it was really rough to maintain. Oooofff the sleepless nights I’d spent hunting for fixes that AI now can fix in mere seconds. I use ChatGPT a ton now to fix issues and my distro has been solid ever since.
