 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 1059, 26 February 2024 |
Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
The Linux terminal is a core part of virtually every distribution and it has its roots in a long tradition, going back to the dawn of Unix. While virtual terminals and modern shells have polished the experience of typing and running commands, adding keyboard shortcuts and auto-completion for convenience, the terminal has not evolved much over the past 50 years. The Warp Terminal team is aiming to change this, ushering in a new type of virtual terminal which approaches the command line like a modern desktop application. Warp introduces text editor style command line editing, predictive typing, logically separated output, and AI assistance. We begin this week with a look at Warp and its capabilities. AI assistants are popping up everywhere, from web browsers to development tools to the terminal. What do you think of the idea of merging AI assistance into the virtual terminal? Let us know in this week's Opinion Poll. Also on the topic of navigating terminals, we discuss how to find help in local manual pages using the man command in this week's Questions and Answers column. Then, in our News section, we discuss malware found in Canonical's Snap repository which steals digital currency and Red Hat contemplating raising the CPU requirements for RHEL 10. We also share some areas where the UBports team plans on improving their mobile operating system. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week with you along with the torrents we are seeding. Then we take a moment to thank our supporters who continue to donate to DistroWatch. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
This week's DistroWatch Weekly is presented by TUXEDO Computers.
Content:
- Review: Warp terminal with AI
- News: Canonical's Snap store found to be distributing malware, Red Hat considers updating its CPU requirements, UBports working on VoLTE and backup utility
- Questions and answers: Navigating manual pages
- Released last week: Ubuntu 22.04.4, antiX 23.1, Armbian 24.2.1, Accessible-Coconut 22.04.3, Tiny Core Linux 15.0
- Torrent corner: Armbian, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio, Xubuntu
- Upcoming releases: openSUSE 15.6-beta, FreeBSD 13.3-RC2
- Opinion poll: AI features in the virtual terminal
- Site news: Tracking and searching for x86-64-v3, Donations and Sponsors
- New additions: Accessible-Coconut
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
Warp terminal with AI
I've been using computers for about 38 years and, throughout that time, I've made heavy use of command line interfaces. Early on, in the Commodore 64 and DOS days, there was a lack of alternative options. However, as my computing journey continued into the realms of Windows, Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD a command line, in some form or another, was always a big part of the experience. The form the command lines took was fairly consistent over the decades. Virtually every terminal I've sat in front of followed a similar flow: show the user a prompt, wait for a command to be typed, dump some output, show the prompt again. The shell syntax and command names varied a lot from one platform to another (the transition from DOS to Solaris was jarring, to put it mildly), but the way the shell behaved, the workflow the terminals presented, remained largely the same. Getting a directory listing and launching a program worked much the same whether I was running DOS, Solaris, or Linux.
Over the years the concept of a terminal (virtual or physical) hasn't changed a lot. Shells have extended the functionality a bit, adding command history, shortcuts, and predictive path names. Virtual terminals have added some mouse support and tabs. Otherwise, the experience of running DOS with some extensions in the 90s feels quite similar to running a bash shell on most Linux distributions. Warp seeks to change this status quo.
The Warp terminal seeks to modernize how users interact with their virtual terminals, providing a number of enhancements and integrations. Warp, which is written in the Rust language, provides some protection against common memory access flaws. It also merges the classic style of a virtual terminal with modern text editor and IDE-style interactions. Warp integrates search features, helpfully offers suggestions to natural language queries, and has an AI assistant to help us troubleshoot errors. That's a lot to ideas to process and I recommend checking out the Warp terminal's documentation before getting started as it highlights some key features.
I had the chance to try out a beta of Warp before it was released for Linux and I'd like to share my experiences and observations with you as this feels like one of the biggest steps forward for me in the command line space since migrating from DOS batch files to Unix shell scripts.
Getting started
I downloaded an AppImage bundle for Warp which was 42MB in size. There are also RPM and Deb files for Warp which are about 25MB in size. Making this file executable and running it opens the Wrap terminal. The first time I launched Warp, the software asked me to sign into a account and it opened a link in my web browser to help me set up a Warp account. This account then supplied me with a registration token I was asked to copy/paste into a field in the Warp start-up wizard. I was asked a few survey questions by the Warp first-run wizard, covering how I learned about Warp and in what environments I planned to use the software. Then the wizard disappeared and presented me with a terminal window.
Warp then asks us a few more questions the first time we run it. These include asking us to select a theme with our options including: Light, Dark, Dracula, and Wave. We can then choose to use a classic prompt style (the shell prompt we'd normally see) or a custom prompt provided by Warp. We're then shown a terminal with a prompt at the bottom of the window. The terminal displays text suggesting we can use the "#" character, followed by a typed natural language question, to ask the terminal for help. I'll come back to this feature in a bit. Then we're left to explore the terminal just as we would use Konsole, GNOME Terminal, or xterm.
Features
The Warp virtual terminal works with most modern Linux shells, including bash, fish, and zsh. When Warp is run it automatically tries to use our account's default shell and adjusts our shell's output to fit in with the Warp interface.
We can see a list of keyboard shortcuts Warp supports by typing Ctrl /. This brings up a list of supported shortcuts which we can use keywords to search. For example, pressing Ctrl / and then typing "setting" will show me that the Ctrl , shortcut opens the Warp Settings window.
Warp Terminal -- Getting a suggestion for a command
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We can get simple advice from the Warp terminal regarding which commands would be useful in a given situation by typing the "#" symbol, followed by a natural language query. For example, typing "# How do I update one flatpak package?" will cause Warp to respond with the suggestion that we run "flatpak update package-name". When I asked Warp: "# How do I update all packages on the system?" it responded, correctly, that I could use "apt update && apt upgrade -y". Likewise asking, "# How do I convert a wav file to mp3?" correctly returned the answer: "ffmpeg -i input-file.wav output-file.mp3".
This approach to asking questions and getting responses is quite slick and clicking on a suggested answer automatically copies the command to our input prompt so we don't need to copy/paste it. This may be my favourite feature of Warp and an option I wished I'd had in college.
When we are typing a command, Warp will try to anticipate our next parameter, such as a filename or a commonly used command switch. The suggestions appear to come from a combination of our shell history and the contents of the current directory. If the suggestion Warp makes is accurate, we can accept the suggestion by pressing the Right Arrow key.
We can also use classic Tab completion, with an enhancement. Pressing Tab may offer multiple matches for command line flags, files, or directories and we can scroll through them to pick the one we want.
As with some other shells, we can press Ctrl R to browse our command history. Warp includes a search feature so we can narrow in on a specific command or parameter we have used in the past. Selecting a past entry automatically copies it to our input line after the prompt.
Warp supports a concept called Launch Configurations. This allows the user to automate certain steps and processes. For example, we might want to set up a configuration to jump to a code project directory and perform a checkout of the source code when we open the terminal.
We can split the Warp terminal into panes. The Ctrl Shift D command splits the terminal down the middle and Ctrl Shift W closes the active pane. This makes it easier to do side-by-side comparisons of output and text files.
Warp can act as a file manager. If a filename is displayed in a command's output (such as from ls) we can click on a file to open it. We can open text files, links, images, and office documents from the command line with a click.
A key feature we are likely to notice when using Warp is the terminal treats command line input like a text editor. We can use the arrow keys and the mouse to navigate text we are typing. We can highlight words to copy them or highlight them and start typing to replace them. We can use normal text editor shortcuts to jump between words.
Normally our command prompt and the text we type remain pinned in one spot, by default at the bottom of the screen. Though we can pin the prompt and input box to the top of the window or let it scroll down the way the prompt does in other terminals. The location of the prompt can be adjusted in Warp's Settings panel. This offers a consistent location for our eyes to track input and reduces mouse movement.
Blocks
When we run a command its output appears in a block in the Warp window. These blocks can be highlighted as a whole and we can perform actions on a command's output block. A block can be selected with the mouse or by pressing Ctrl and the Up/Down Arrow keys. Actions we can perform on a block include copying the entire output of the command, copying the line we typed, searching for text in the output block, and engaging AI help features. This means with a few keystrokes we can run a command, highlight its block, and copy just this one command's output to the clipboard to use elsewhere.
Warp Terminal -- Three output blocks
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One interesting thing we can do with an output block is select it and right-click to find text (or use Ctrl Shift F). We can then search through the block for matching text and it will be highlighted for us. The find feature works on interactive output, such as the text from a system monitor like top. This allows us to search for text like a username or a specific process name and it will stay highlighted, even as the information updates.
Warp Terminal -- Highlighting words in dynamic output
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These output blocks not only make it easy to select and perform actions on text on our screen, it also keeps output from different commands logically separated - both from each other and from our command prompt. This keeps the terminal window looking more tidy.
We can share a block of text, sending it to another person through a URL so they can see our command and its output. This is especially handy when troubleshooting or sending large amounts of information to a colleague. This way they can see exactly what we see, just by clicking a URL we send them. It basically works like a Pastebin service, all within the terminal window.
One more interesting thing we can do with blocks is pass a block of output to an AI chat bot to get suggestions and fixes for common problems. I'll come back to this feature with examples later.
Settings
Warp has an extensive settings panel. It offers the ability to check for Warp software updates, see blocks of output we've shared, and adjust the theme. We can adjust the opacity of the Warp window, toggle cursor blinking, and decide where to (and whether to) pin the input prompt.
There is an option to change the terminal's font (which worked for me) and another for changing font size (which did not work for me). I was able to zoom in/out to adjust font in the main terminal window by using Ctrl + and Ctrl -. I couldn't
find any option to change the font colour if we don't like the colour of one of the themes.
We can toggle whether to see Warp's changelog after each update, we can enable/disable typing aids (like adding a close quote symbol after each open quote). We can change our start-up directory, whether to wrap secure shell sessions to enable Warp features on remote machines, and toggle whether we want to see notifications on the desktop when long-running commands complete.
There are more settings, including seeing which output blocks we have shared with people and what kind of prompt we want. In short, Warp is highly flexible in its layout and behaviour.
Issues
While Warp has a lot of interesting features, a good deal of flexibility, and some helpful tools built into it, it is also still in pre-release development on Linux. There are a few rough edges the developers are polishing and, I found, they were happy to receive feedback so they could address potential problems.
The first issue I ran into is Warp didn't work with some bash variables. For example, bash uses the $_ variable to indicate the last parameter of the previous command. It's useful for tasks like these where we create a new directory and then move into it:
$ mkdir temp
$ cd $_
However, this doesn't work in Warp and results in an error message when the second command is typed, reporting: "bash: cd: warp_report_input: No such file or directory". This issue has been reported and a workaround is to string the commands together on one line, for example the following will work:
$ mkdir temp ; cd $_
Other shell variables tended to work. For example, running the command "echo $USER" correctly outputs my username. Previous command referencing also worked. I could run "echo !:1" to see the first parameter of the previous command, for instance.
Some shell shortcuts are not handled or don't always work as expected. For instance, typing Ctrl A in Warp selects all the text on the input line instead of moving the cursor to the start of the line as one would expect when using bash. Likewise, Ctrl E moves the cursor to the end of the line in bash, but has no effect in Warp.
In bash the shortcut Ctrl L clears the screen. This doesn't always happen in Warp. Some of the window will clear, but not always all of it, sometimes leaving lines of text behind. Running the clear command does successfully clear the terminal window every time.
In the Warp settings panel there is an option to sync the terminal's theme with the host operating system. I tried this and it did not work for me. My Xfce desktop was using a dark theme, but Warp used a light, washed out theme when synced with my host system. I could override this by forcing Warp to use its built-in dark theme.
While not a bug, something I found odd was I could not find a way to delete a single block of output from the Warp window. There is a shortcut to delete all blocks, but not a single block. This would have been handy, I thought, if I wanted to write tutorials and share screenshots of commands, but just include the relevant or successful commands.
Warp Terminal -- Sticky command header blocking top of output
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No matter where the prompt box is pinned (or whether it is pinned), I found the top lines of output in interactive commands (such as top or the vim text editor) would be covered by the Warp prompt. This resulted in the first two lines being covered and I struggled for a while to find a solution, especially when I was logged into remote systems. One fellow Warp user offered a solution. Disabling the sticky command header feature in the settings panel fixes this issue. With the sticky headers turned off all output text was displayed, even when running interactive or remote processes.
AI Features
Earlier I mentioned there is a helpful feature that will take natural language questions such as "# How do I convert a wav file to mp3?" and try to supply a simple answer. Warp has another built in helper function called Ask Warp AI.
How it usually works is we run a command and get some output. Let's say I made a mistake or ran a command and got an error message back. I can click on the lighting icon next to the output block to open a side panel with the Ask Warp AI chat bot. The command I just ran and its output are passed to the chat bot and then we can ask it questions. The default query, already typed in for us, is "How do I fix this?"
Warp Terminal -- Ask Warp AI in action
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I was curious if this would work to help me troubleshoot some problems. More specifically, I wanted to see if the chat bot could guess what I was trying to accomplish and then provide a good solution. I ran Warp through a few examples, including one straight forward task and one more complex one. I'd like to share the results with you.
The first example I tried was fairly easy and a common problem. I attempted to run a script for which I did not have execute permissions. The command just looked like this: "./test-script". The command failed with the error "./test-script: Permission denied", as expected. I then ran the Ask Warp AI feature on the output block and it suggested a three step solution:
- Check the file permissions using "ls -l test-script".
- Enable execute permissions using "chmod +x test-script"
- Try running the script again with "./test-script".
This is a letter perfect answer and one most people who work from the command line have had to perform at least a few times. I decided to ramp up the difficulty.
I created a command which used awk and included a few syntax errors. This is the sort of thing you might do if you made a typo or remembered a keyword incorrectly. The command I ran looked like this and was intended to show every third line in a file containing package names from EasyOS:
cat easyos-5.7.txt | awk '{if (RN % 3 = 0) print $1}'
The command failed with a syntax error, indicating a problem near the equals sign (=). I then clicked the lightning bolt on that output block and pressed Enter. The Warp AI correctly guessed I was trying to print the first field of every third line of the input file. It then correctly pointed out the equals sign should be a double-equals (==) for awk to understand it correctly. The chat bot then pointed out "RN" is a common mistake when people really mean to type "NR" (record number vs number of the record). The Warp bot then suggested I try the following command, which is correct and worked as desired.
cat easyos-5.7.txt | awk '{if (NR % 3 == 0) print $1}'
In other words, even when debugging awk scripts, something I might need to double-check a manual page to do, Warp handled the situation successfully and virtually instantly.
Other observations
I have three other observations I'd like to share. One is that Warp, while it is cross-platform, is not open source. There are some discussions about opening up Warp's source code for some or all of the client-side, but it hasn't happened yet.
Something I appreciate about Warp is it places output in blocks and these blocks are kept separate from the prompt and user input. This prevents the output from background commands from merging with and mangling our next command. Anyone who has debugged daemon services or GUI programs from the command line has likely experienced past commands dumping output all over the command line prompt. Warp cleanly addresses this common problem.
Warp places a wrapper around the ssh command and this can affect the behaviour of sessions on remote hosts. This is documented behaviour and intended to help us enjoy Warp features on remote systems. However, the Warp wrapper can affect output placement and create visual issues on remote sessions. There are a few ways to work around the ssh wrapper if we wish. The easiest way is to disable the SSH Wrapper feature in the Warp settings panel. Another way to to specify the full path name of our ssh program (usually /usr/bin/ssh) which avoids engaging the wrapper.
Conclusions
I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to the command line. I usually disable most features in terminals like Konsole and GNOME Terminal because I want a quick, clean, distraction-free experience. I've been using command lines for a long time, almost all of my life, so I generally don't want more assistance as much as I want the terminal to stay out of my way so I can work.
However, once I spent some time customizing Warp and disabling a few things (like sticky headers, ssh wrappers, and blinking cursors), I found I settled into using Warp quite comfortably. Partly because, with these items turned off, Warp offers a pleasantly distraction-free experience. A bigger bonus for me though was I felt like it was the first terminal in 20 years to improve my experience.
Mostly this improvement came in the form of output blocks. They make the output cleaner, better organized, and the pinned prompt means I always know where I am typing. In other words, this modern Warp terminal makes my environment more static, more predictable, and I value this.
While I personally usually don't need helpful hints and a chat bot to help me through troubleshooting commands anymore (25 years of Linux experience is finally paying off), I think for a lot of people, especially Linux newcomers, these features will help a great deal. Places like distro forums, Reddit, and Stack Overflow are filled with support questions from novice users asking how to perform basic tasks, troubleshoot scripts, and interpret errors. Warp can do this for the user and offer solutions all within the comfort of the terminal window. I think this will be very helpful, especially for less experienced users. I may use it from time to time too if I forget a specific command line flag rather than searching through a manual page.
While Warp does have a few rough edges, they are being addressed. And while there are some features, like the SSH Wrapper, I felt were more distracting than helpful, the vast bulk of Warp's features I found pleasant and helpful. I like the blocks, I like the easy method of sharing output with other people, and I like the troubleshooting bot. I also really enjoy the command line auto-complete suggestions. This might be the first terminal or shell I have used where the in-line suggestions were more helpful than annoying and I ended up using Right Arrow a lot to complete commands rather than disabling the feature as I have in other shells and terminals.
In short, I have been enjoying Warp - both exploring it and its improvements to my workflow as I've gradually got used to the way it tries to improve the user experience. It's been 20 years since I switched terminals for any length of time and Warp might be what finally gets me to shift gears.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Canonical's Snap store found to be distributing malware, Red Hat considers updating its CPU requirements, UBports working on VoLTE and backup utility
Canonical, the software company behind Ubuntu, came under scrutiny this week with regards to its Snap software repository and the processes by which software authors can publish packages in their curated store. One of the reasons Linux distributions tend to provide central software repositories is to provide users with software which has been tested and verified as safe to use in some fashion. This past week Alan Pope reported a Snap package claiming to be a Bitcoin wallet called Exodus was downloaded from Canonical's Snap repository and used to steal digital coins from its user. An examination of the malicious package revealed it was a low effort piece of malware which should have been caught if Canonical had any vetting processes in place. Pope's overview of the malicious package reveals the details:
"I wanted to take a look at the application itself. So on my workstation, in a separate virtual machine, I ran 'snap download exodus' to download, but not install the application. I don't have any cryptocurrency wallets on my system, but I didn't know what the application might try to do, so for safety I didn't run it directly on my computer. A snap is just a squashfs file, typically containing an application, libraries, assets and metadata. I unpacked the snap with unsquashfs and briefly poked around at the resulting files. Notably much of the metadata in the snap.yaml file was still the developer defaults such as 'Single-line elevator pitch for your amazing snap'. Further investigation revealed this was an application developed using Flutter. The application binary was quite small, and there weren't a lot of bundled libraries beyond the essentials, potentially indicating limited features." The offending application has since been quarantined to prevent it from spreading.
* * * * *
Red Hat announced earlier this year the company was looking at upgrading the CPU requirements for their next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which would be version 10. At the time some work was being done within CentOS to test performance differences between x86-64-v2 (which was already in use) and x86-64-v3. "The CentOS ISA SIG has produced rebuilds of CentOS 9 with x86-64-v2 and x86-64-v3 baselines, after upgrading the system compiler to GCC 12. As mentioned above, GCC 11, the RHEL 9 system compiler, does not support auto-vectorization at -O2, which is why we switched to GCC 12 for these rebuilds. For this experiment, GCC 12 is still reasonably close to GCC 11 in terms of bug-for-bug C++ compatibility, so that few packages needed fixing before they could be rebuilt. We hope that these builds can be used to show performance improvements for key packages and workloads. Even if we cannot show performance improvements for software included in RHEL, it may still make sense to go ahead with the switch. The reason is that if RHEL 10 requires the x86-64-v3 baseline, ISVs will be able to rely on it, too. This reduces maintenance cost for some ISVs because they no longer need to maintain (and test) AVX and non-AVX code paths in their manually tuned software." The proposal for updating to x86-64-v3 may be going ahead as at least one tester of CentOS Stream has found development snapshots now require a CPU which supports x86-64-v3, blocking older processors from running the distribution.
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The UBports team has outlined and organized the work the project's developers are focused on at the moment. Some of the key elements being addressed are VoLTE network compatibility and a backup utility: "The first priority within that is VoLTE, which is especially important for our friends in North America. Ivan Ucherdzhiev is involved with UI. Backups are another issue. We are looking for a utility in Settings which will define folders to be backed up and enable users to choose where they should be backed up to. There would also have to be a restore function, which would be especially useful when setting up a new device. Additional key areas are discussed in the project's blog post.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Navigating manual pages
Recently I was talking with a colleague who was running into trouble running a cron job. A cron job is a task or command that is run at scheduled times. The scheduled job was running, but not properly processing the arguments passed to it. While he engaged in troubleshooting the situation, I turned to the local manual pages on my computer. We both came to the same conclusion: the parameters for the command included percent signs (%) in the configuration file (also known as a crontab file) which were interpreted by cron as special characters.
I mention this bit of trivia because my esteemed colleague had checked the manual page for crontab (by running "man crontab") and found no reference to how percent signs were interpreted differently. On the other hand, I had quickly found the relevant part of the appropriate manual page. As it happened, we'd been looking at two different manual pages, both called "crontab", but I ended up looking at the relevant page while he was shown a page that wasn't helpful in this scenario. Why was that? Well, let's look at how manual pages are organized.
Local manual pages (often referred to as "man pages") are arranged into nine documentation categories:
- Executable programs and shell commands
- System calls
- Library calls
- Special files (such as those found in the /dev directory)
- File formats and conventions (such as the format of a crontab file or /etc/passwd)
- Games
- Miscellaneous
- System administration commands (often specific to the root user)
- Kernel routines
The sorting of manual pages into separate categories helps us in a few ways. It can help us browse groups of pages to find something we want. Having the pages organized this way also means people packaging software can separate documentation about configuration files (which would go under section 5 - file formats) from executable files (section 1) with the same name. However, this style of organization also causes a problem. It means when we look up a manual page with the man command, it will display the first entry with a matching name it finds, not necessarily the entry we want.
In the case of my colleague and myself, when he ran the command "man crontab" the man program searched through its categories in order and quickly found the documentation for the crontab executable program manual page. This manual page is also known as "crontab (1)" because the documentation for executable programs is in category number 1.
I had taken a different approach. I had run the command "man -k crontab" which provided a list of all installed manual pages that had the word "crontab" somewhere in the title. The "-k" flag indicates we are performing a keyword search. The output looked like this:
$ man -k crontab
anacrontab (5) - configuration file for anacron
crontab (1) - maintain crontab files for individual users (Vixie Cron)
crontab (5) - tables for driving cron
Since I was concerned with the format of a cron table (or crontab), the entry "crontab (5)" looked to be the right one. I then ran "man 5 crontab" to bring up the crontab entry in the 5th documentation category. Had I wished to specify the manual page for the crontab executable program I could have run "man 1 crontab". Having brought up the manual page for formatting a crontab file, it was easy to find information on formatting and special characters.
Manual pages are typically stored under the /usr/share/man directory and are separated into directories based on their categories. This means we can browse an index of all manual pages in a specific category by listing the contents of the appropriate directory. For instance, if I wanted to see all documentation on file formats (category 5) I could run:
ls /usr/share/man/man5
On the other hand, if I wanted to browse all manual pages for executable files, I'd run the following command to see all pages in section 1:
ls /usr/share/man/man1
Often times the documentation for one page will refer to related documentation in another page. Many manual pages have a "See Also" section near the bottom where they list other pages which might interest us. For instance, the man page for the crontab executable command suggests we might also like to look at "crontab(5), cron(8)". The first page talks about the file format for setting up scheduled cron jobs. The second page, which eagle-eyed readers will note is in the 8th documentation category for system administration, talks about how to run and manage the cron background service.
For additional information on how to access and explore local manual pages, running the command "man man" will show the manual page viewer's documentation.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Ubuntu 22.04.4
The Ubuntu team has announced an update to the distribution's 22.04 LTS release. The new update, 22.04.4, mostly fixes security bugs and includes a new install image for ARM servers: "As usual, this point release includes many updates and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-severity bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. 22.04.4 also includes a new arm64+largemem ISO for ARM servers which provides a 64k page size kernel. This can increase throughput at the cost of higher memory usage." The release notes offer additional information.
antiX 23.1
antiX, a systemd-free Linux distribution based on Debian's "stable" branch, has received a minor update to version 23.1: "antiX 23.1 'Arditi del Popolo' is a bug-fix release based on Debian 'Bookworm'. As usual, we offer completely systemd-free and elogind-free flavours for both 32-bit and 64-bit architecture. Features: based on Debian 12 'Bookworm', but without systemd and elogind; eudev instead of udev; customised 5.10.197 Linux kernel; customised 6.1.60 Linux kernel (x64 full only); LibreOffice 24.2.0; Firefox 115.8.0esr on antiX-full, SeaMonkey 2.53.18.1 on antiX-base; Claws Mail; CUPS for printing, PipeWire and WirePlumber on Full editions, ALSA on Base and Core editions; Celluloid and mpv for playing video; SMTube to play youtube videos without using a browser; QPdfView PDF reader; App Select; User Language - set up localisation of popular apps e.g. LibreOffice; no snaps (systemd) and no Flatpaks (elogind)." Continue to the release announcement for further details.
Armbian 24.2.1
The Armbian team has announced the release of Armbian 24.2, the latest version of the project's Debian and Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed primarily for ARM development boards. It supports a large range of popular armhf, aarch64 and riscv64 devices: "We're excited to announce the latest Armbian release, 24.2, code name 'Kereru'. This update comes with a plethora of changes, making the Armbian experience even better. In recent developments, we're proud to announce the completion of several projects geared towards refining the Armbian experience. Notably, we've resolved DNS resolution issues associated with Debian 'Bookworm', ensuring smoother connectivity for users. Furthermore, our team has optimized the performance of HDMI consoles on Khadas VIM1S and VIM4 devices, alleviating previous sluggishness." See the release announcement and the release changelog for more information.
Accessible-Coconut 22.04.3
The Zendalona team, which develops free and open-source accessibility software for visually-impaired users, has release an updated version of Accessible-Coconut, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with integrated accessibility features. The new version 24.04.3, is based on the latest long-term supported variant of Ubuntu MATE: "It is evident from the feedback received over the past few years that the Accessible-Coconut GNU/Linux operating system represents a significant advancement in enhancing the lives of individuals with visual impairments. Zendalona is pleased to announce the release of Accessible-Coconut 22.04.03, which integrates all the valuable feedback provided by our users. Such responses are expected to continue. The new version comes with two interesting new games - Maths-Tutor and Snakes-and-Ladders. Additional updates in the new version encompass system upgrades, enhanced support for Pidgin Telegram, updates to Coco-Patcher, fixes for eBook-speaker and refreshed files within the user guide. We are thrilled to announce that Zendalona has been accepted into Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2024. This presents a significant opportunity to empower students and drive forward open-source development, particularly in the realm of accessibility." Here is the full release announcement with related links.
Accessible-Coconut 22.04.3 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
Tiny Core Linux 15.0
Version 15.0 of Tiny Core Linux, an independently-developed, minimalist and modular distribution with community-built extensions, has been released. This latest version ships with Linux kernel 6.6.8 and an updated toolchain, including glibc 2.38: "Team Tiny Core is proud to announce the release of Tiny Core Linux 15.0. Changelog for 15.0: Linux kernel updated to 6.6.8; glibc updated to 2.38; GCC updated to 13.2.0; Binutils updated to 2.41; e2fsprogs base libraries and apps updated to 1.47.0; util-linux base libraries and apps updated to 2.39.2; zlib base library updated to 1.3; BusyBox updated to 1.36.1; tce-functions setdrive setup - use in chown; tce-audit - add md5check action from bdantas; tce-audit - md5check update from bdantas; tce-load - sudo touch from polikuo; update-everything - handle missing or extraneous dep files from bdantas; tce-update - allow tcedir optional to be a symlink from bdantas; update-everything - add safety checks from bdantas...." Here is the full release announcement as published on the project's user forums.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,967
- Total data uploaded: 44.1TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
AI features in the virtual terminal
At the start of this week's issue we talked about the Warp virtual terminal, a new application which brings a number of convenient features, organization tools, and AI integration to the Linux terminal. We'd like to hear what you think of having AI tools like command line suggestions and a troubleshooting chat bot built into your terminal. Are these features you would find useful?
You can see the results of our previous poll on how large our readers' root partitions are in our previous edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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What do you think of AI integration in the terminal?
| I have tried it and like it: | 20 (2%) |
| I have tried it and do not like it: | 15 (1%) |
| I have not tried it but want to: | 364 (28%) |
| I have not tried it and do not want to: | 822 (63%) |
| I do not use a terminal: | 75 (6%) |
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| Website News |
Tracking and searching for x86-64-v3
Over the past year or so more Linux distributions have been looking at ways to squeeze more performance out of their packages using CPU optimizations. One increasingly popular approach to optimizing performance is by targeting upgraded specifications for the x86_64 CPU architecture. Updates to this architecture include performance improvements which can speed up workstations and servers. The updated processors (which are backward compatible with the original x86_64 instructions) are usually referred to as x86-64-v2, x86-64-v3, and x86-64-v4.
A few distributions are updating their packages to target x86-64-v3 which will improve performance while causing the packages to no longer run on the original x86_64 instruction set.
We are beginning to tag distributions in our database which support/require these updated x86_64 instructions, in particularly the popular x86-64-v3 architecture. You can now find distributions optimized for updated x86_64 CPUs on our Search page by selecting the desired x86_64 version from the Architecture field.
If you know of a distribution which now supports x86-64-v3 which is not tagged in our database, please let us know by e-mail us at distro@distrowatch.com and placing "x86-64" in the subject line. Please be sure to link to the release notes or wiki page where the developers indicate support for the newer instruction sets as a lot of projects talk about recommending CPU optimizations, but do not actually implement them.
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Donations and Sponsors
Each month we receive support and kindness from our readers in the form of donations. These donations help us keep the web server running, pay contributors, and keep infrastructure like our torrent seed box running. We'd like to thank our generous readers and acknowledge how much their contributions mean to us.
This month we're grateful for the $202 in contributions from the following kind souls:
| Donor |
Amount |
|---|
| Dennis H | $102 |
| J S | $50 |
| Jonathon B | $10 |
| Sam C | $10 |
| Chung T | $5 |
| Darkeugene7896 | $5 |
| DuCakedHare | $5 |
| Kristmark R. G | $4 |
| J.D. L | $2 |
| PB C | $2 |
| Peter M | $2 |
| c6WWldo9 | $1 |
| Stephen M | $1 |
| R Brooks | $1 |
| Shasheen E | $1 |
| William E | $1 |
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New projects added to database
Accessible-Coconut
Accessible-Coconut (AC) is a community driven GNU/Linux distribution which is completely accessible for persons with visual impairments. It is derived from Ubuntu MATE. The project's goal is to develop an eyes-free desktop environment. Some of the features of the distribution include screen reader, print reading, six-key input, accessible audio and video editing solutions, ebook speaker, screen magnification facilities, and accessible disk management solutions, among various others.
Accessible-Coconut 22.04.3 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 1.1MB, resolution: 1920x1200 pixels)
* * * * *
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 4 March 2024. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Weekly Archive and Article Search pages. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Want a terminal with a splash of AI...? (by tom joad on 2024-02-26 03:16:41 GMT from United States)
Nope.
2 • "artificial intelligence": warmly embraced only by the artificial intelligentia. (by R. Cain on 2024-02-26 03:34:13 GMT from United States)
"I have found that people are interested in 'artificial intelligence' for the same reason that some people are interested in artificial limbs: they are missing one."--David L. Parnas
3 • AI in apps (by AppI on 2024-02-26 04:21:54 GMT from United States)
Soon AI-assisted apps will be all the rage - in graphics, music, docs, programming, etc. this will give a much needed shake-up to the staid tech industry, that just produces hundreds of do-one-job-well apps. AI might help to get more usefulness out of such apps, or combinations of same.
4 • A.I is not yet... (by Bobbie Sellers on 2024-02-26 05:33:24 GMT from United States)
So called A.I is a tool much like a search engine but with the ability to produce
something which it does not much understand. It has no ability to detect lies
online which leads to papers that assert un-provable matters but it is a tool
and might conceivable be useful. The main problem is limiting its data bases
to authenticated information. But it might be fun to play with.
5 • Warp is non-free software (by Andy Prough on 2024-02-26 06:04:44 GMT from United States)
I think it would be better to start a review like this one about Warp by warning that it is non-free software. That's a non-starter for some of us. That, combined with its required registration and its apparent requirement to be constantly online makes me wary that this could end up being another project that collects and sells user data.
6 • Warp (by brad on 2024-02-26 06:34:39 GMT from United States)
I thought I had recently seen Warp as an advertiser on DW - after enough page refreshes, I noticed that Warp is/was an advertiser on DW.
I find DW a valuable resource in the Linux/BSD world,and I realize that advertisers are necessary for the continuing survival of this website, but I have to agree with a previous post that mention of the non-free nature of Warp should have been first, rather than last.
I would add that a mention of the fact that Warp is/was an advertiser should also have been mentioned. When I read the Washington Post online, for instance, any mention of companies that are owned/linked to Jeff Bezos (who owns the Post) are acknowledged.
All that being said,it looks interesting.
7 • Warp (by Twinkling Eyes on 2024-02-26 07:42:17 GMT from Germany)
A glowing review for a commercial company which buys advertising space on DW, That is not mentioned in a disclaimer.
Anyway, the terminal is fine without flashy featuritis. Warp drive on, back to planet common sense...
8 • Warp (by Alexandru on 2024-02-26 07:46:41 GMT from Romania)
In addition to @5, I would add one more dangerous use-case for Warp giving malicious intention: Warp knows your system, knows your root password, knows where you place your files and how you use them, knows the passwords of your keystore et. You get the idea. If Warp online service would be hacked, many Linux systems would be very vulnerable.
9 • Warp terminal (by nfw on 2024-02-26 08:17:44 GMT from Bulgaria)
To use closed source and subscription paid terminal?? No F-way! I wonder why Distrowatch even promote it?
10 • Warp (by John on 2024-02-26 08:50:04 GMT from United Kingdom)
I stopped reading when I found out you had to set up an account, and while I don't rule out using non-free software altogether, using it for something as basic as the terminal is a definite no-no.
11 • AI in my terminal: sl (by jazzfelix on 2024-02-26 10:15:29 GMT from Germany)
The only command line "app" I use which is helping me to get more clever and which is much more clever than I am is: sl. Try it! My favourite shell: ksh93 with vi line editing. This was the biggest step up for me. A bigger step than from Amiga CLI to bash. Honestly Amiga CLI and bash is different but I have no preference. Bash is more capable Amiga CLI more clean and has more aesthetic value. ksh93 it is! But I don't want any AI or wrap/warp to besmear my ksh93 experience. :b
12 • Regarding wrap (by Shqipe on 2024-02-26 11:11:30 GMT from Albania)
The only option that I would like from Wrap (this commercial and sponsoring company in DW) is to help me configure distros in a new install (like wifi, sound,etc). It would be great to configure for example OpenBSD on a laptop.
13 • AI -- not so artificial, not so intelligent (by Cág on 2024-02-26 11:17:12 GMT from Germany)
Running a cat(1) pipe should link to https://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.
14 • Warp review (by Jesse on 2024-02-26 11:32:50 GMT from Canada)
@7: "A glowing review for a commercial company which buys advertising space on DW, That is not mentioned in a disclaimer."
I probably should have gone back and added such a notice. However, I tested and wrote about Warp before they set up the ad with us so it hadn't crossed my mind. The content of my review is not related to the advertising.
@9: "To use closed source and subscription paid terminal?... I wonder why Distrowatch even promote it?"
Warp doesn't require a paid subscription. It's available for free in most cercumstances.
As for why I wanted to talk about it? Because it's interesting. Because it's useful. Because Warp is trying something different. I understand why some people aren't thrilled with the idea, but chances are you use other software every day that requires you to be on-line and that isn't open source. Any web-based email service, your bank's website, tax return software, a weather app? All of those would fall under the same umbrella.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, but almost all of us use proprietary, on-line only services every day and don't think about it.
15 • Warp review (by jazzfelix on 2024-02-26 12:08:20 GMT from Germany)
@14: I think the review was extremely interesting. I also think it would be very helpful. Even for me with my 20 years of bash/tcsh/ksh experience. I also think it was very well written and I read every word of it because it was so interesting. Normally I just read a couple lines and the conclusions of the distro reviews. xD The topic is however very scary and probably insulting our egos because we Unix(-like) users are power users and want to be in control of our system. Only 2% in the poll only use GUI only. We are probably a bit too fond of our console skills to let a GUI or even worse an AI take over. ^^
16 • Warp review (by Ludditus on 2024-02-26 12:26:39 GMT from Romania)
@14: Nope, you're not intellectually honest. Just like Warp's webpage, you did not state outright that Warp requires an account.
Then, there is no way to create an account on their website. The Sign Up has to be invoked from the app itself, which in my case (rpm on AlmaLinux 9.3 KDE) doesn't do anything! It asks for an Auth Token.
Their site says I should check my ad blocker and my firewall. Thanks, but no, thanks. Was Warp written by some dumb AI? It can't even allow people to create an account!
Anyway, this is utterly crap, and you know it, Jesse. Nice try.
BTW: https://github.com/warpdotdev/Warp/issues/2905
17 • Warp (by Jesse on 2024-02-26 12:39:01 GMT from Canada)
@16: "Nope, you're not intellectually honest. "
You're mistaken. I'm intellectually honest, you just don't like what I have to say.
> Just like Warp's webpage, you did not state outright that Warp requires an account.
I pointed out signing up for an account to use Warp in the review. Perhaps you missed it? "The first time I launched Warp, the software asked me to sign into a account and it opened a link in my web browser to help me set up a Warp account. This account then supplied me with a registration token I was asked to copy/paste into a field in the Warp start-up wizard."
> "The Sign Up has to be invoked from the app itself, which in my case (rpm on AlmaLinux 9.3 KDE) doesn't do anything! It asks for an Auth Token."
Yes, the token is displayed on the screen when you complete the sign-in process. You can then just copy/paste it into the terminal window.
> "The Sign Up has to be invoked from the app itself, which in my case (rpm on AlmaLinux 9.3 KDE) doesn't do anything! It asks for an Auth Token."
So you're blocking content on their website and then complaining you don't see the content they are trying to show you? I don't see how that is the fault of the website.
> "Anyway, this is utterly crap, and you know it, Jesse."
Just because you didn't get something to work doesn't make it bad. Just like when a distro doesn't work well for me doesn't make it a waste of time/effort. Different people have different experiences and like different things.
18 • Warp (by dragonmouth on 2024-02-26 12:51:12 GMT from United States)
Too damn invasive. Why do the developers (or whoever) need al that information if not for nefarious purposes?
19 • Warp 2 (by dragonmouth on 2024-02-26 12:59:44 GMT from United States)
@Jesse:
LockBit is also interesting
LockBit is also useful (to some people)
20 • Canonical Snap security (by borgio3 on 2024-02-26 13:33:02 GMT from Italy)
Canonical's Snap Store seems to be a serious problem for operating system integrity and user security. After the news reported by Alan Pope and described on this page, I wonder if anyone has doubts about the dangerousness of Snap as a package manager in Ubuntu. Does anyone at Canonical verify the reliability of the collected packages?
21 • What do you think of AI integration in the terminal? (by RetiredIT on 2024-02-26 14:11:28 GMT from United States)
"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) - English theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author
22 • Warp (by Mike W on 2024-02-26 14:35:40 GMT from United States)
The first thing I thought of when I read the name of the distro that was reviewed this week is: "My God. Did someone bring OS/2 Warp back to life?"
23 • @17 Warp (by Anthony on 2024-02-26 15:50:16 GMT from Austria)
> So you're blocking content on their website and then complaining you don't see the content they are trying to show you? I don't see how that is the fault of the website.
I get what you're saying: blocking a piece of the webpage that is needed for the webpage to work obviously causes trouble. But... it takes two to tango: relying on third-party resources is often an arbitrary decision, and as such, it is the responsibility (potentially the fault) of the website. Sourcehut manages to provide login and even TOTP while the whole site works *without* Javascript... and without any 3rd-party resources. Many sites manage to provide the login functionality while 3rd party resources are blocked; those who "cannot" (read: "are unwilling to") do so have no excuses.
24 • OS/2 return (by Jesse on 2024-02-26 16:14:41 GMT from Canada)
@22: The first thing I thought of when I read the name of the distro that was reviewed this week is: "My God. Did someone bring OS/2 Warp back to life?"
Wouldn't that be a fun day? I wonder what a modern version of OS/2 would look like?
25 • AI (by Jerry on 2024-02-26 16:25:08 GMT from United States)
AI the movie was interesting, and very well done. As far as AI going on in our world here and now I confess to feeling a bit intimidated by it at this point.
Immersion is the only cure for that, I suppose.
26 • Warp (by David on 2024-02-26 16:38:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
Replacing the traditional terminal? A few years ago some-one suggested replacing the steering-wheel on a car with an aircraft-style control yoke. After all, the steering wheel was a century old — surely we could do better today? A Japanese company actually exhibited a prototype car. What ever happened to that idea?
27 • AI (by zephyr on 2024-02-26 16:51:01 GMT from United States)
Review is broad and not mentioning an account! Anything requiring an email and account is thumbs down. No need to get wrapped up into a $Windumb fiasco ever again. Not for me. Stay with KISS and enjoy Linux.
28 • Man pages (by Kevin on 2024-02-26 17:26:22 GMT from Canada)
Does anyone use man pages anymore? Seems to me these days it makes more sense to just google everything, makes it easier to get examples that way.
29 • Man pages (by anticapitalista on 2024-02-26 19:02:11 GMT from Greece)
@28 - yes. I just needed to since I had no Internet connection and man resolvconf provided a solution
30 • Warp and AI (by Nathan on 2024-02-26 19:28:32 GMT from United States)
Fantastic review, Jesse! My typical beef with AI assistants is that they don't work well as tools. In particular, I want a tool that behaves predictably and which reports correct information. AI assistants may or may not perform the task requested, and their reports are as likely to be works of fiction as of fact. But it looks like Warp's narrow focus of being a StackOverflow equivalent sidesteps these issues by simply recommending solutions that I can then vet and enter into my good ol' shell myself. I still won't be using it anytime soon as I'm an old curmudgeon who prefers to enter my error messages into a search engine AI rather than one integrated into my terminal, but hey, to each his own.
31 • Man pages, snap store exploit (by Andy Prough on 2024-02-26 19:38:34 GMT from Switzerland)
@28 - "Does anyone use man pages anymore? Seems to me these days it makes more sense to just google everything, makes it easier to get examples that way."
Seeing that Google has been caught recently selling their top search result listings to malware makers, I think the last thing I would do is ask Google for example commands to run. Besides, the good man pages already have example commands.
@20 - "After the news reported by Alan Pope and described on this page, I wonder if anyone has doubts about the dangerousness of Snap as a package manager in Ubuntu. Does anyone at Canonical verify the reliability of the collected packages?"
Apparently Canonical does not even do basic checking of the snaps in the snap store. I wish that the snap store and flathub would review and build all the packages themselves before posting them, like F-Droid does.
32 • WARP (by Any on 2024-02-26 20:04:35 GMT from Spain)
Closed source, needs registration, account, Internet, home calling ...
No, thank you.
33 • Snaps (by Brian59 on 2024-02-26 21:27:16 GMT from United States)
@31 is correct. Canonical does not even check the snap package before they become available. This is the main reason I left Ubuntu Mate and few years ago and moved to Linux Mint.
34 • Warp - interesting, but no thanks! (by Calm Kevin on 2024-02-26 21:53:37 GMT from New Zealand)
AI trying to weedle it's way into my terminal - NOPE. But it is an interesting technology. The comments exploded around closed nature, registration, advertising - tiring to wade through it. Back to the core of it - it is interesting... an attempt to create a crutch for the legless in terminal country.
I think I have it figured why in the article this works:
$ mkdir temp ; cd $_
but not separately. Warp is not bash, so when you give a command, it invokes a bash. So when the next command is issued, that bash shell is done and gone, variables and all. A new one does not have content for $_ and fails. But as above the two commands are passed to one bash invocation which then has $_.
35 • Privacy Paranoia (by Joseph Mitzen on 2024-02-26 22:26:02 GMT from United States)
People need to stop freaking out about "privacy". The fact is, if you're not George Clooney or Taylor Swift, no one cares about you. No one wants "your" data. Some entities may aggregate data for research purposes, but no one cares what you personally are doing with your PC. You have no data anyone wants to see for free, much less pay for. I enable every cookie, opt-in to anything asked of me, and my life has not changed one iota for the worse. I'm not a secret agent or a wanted man. People need to adjust their egos.
And all the AI hate is just silly. The reviewed showed how incredibly useful it is in this circumstance. Someone making an error with a terminal command or misremembering arcane parameters is able to ask a question right at the terminal and get a correct answer, including code formulation. That's AMAZING and a lot simpler than opening a browser and navigating to documentation pages or asking coding questions on Stack Overflow and waiting and hoping for a reply sometime soon. This is objectively a GREAT feature and all the "nope" replies are inherently Luddite with no justification given.
There's nothing wrong with closed source - again, you're not a spy, the code isn't coming from North Korea, and 99.9% of you never look at the source anyway. There's nothing wrong with registration - do you refuse to drive because your car needs to be registered? The product is presumably using a remote back-end to do the AI heavy lifting, so registration makes sense. Perhaps one could argue for a local AI option provided one has a lot of cores and RAM to spare.
This is a really cool idea and it's great to see innovation coming to the terminal. The problem is that most terminal users are stodgy and old-fashioned and will reject outright any change, no matter how beneficial. :-(
If folks think this can be done even better (and with local AI), they're free to create their own open source project and show us. I honestly hope they do so.
36 • nothing to hide - then they came for ME (by duck-n-run on 2024-02-27 01:40:00 GMT from New Zealand)
@35 - ask around your family. The great DataReich _not_ having details about you might be a life saver. The old saying about boiling frogs, start them in cold water first.
37 • "A-I". (by R. Cain on 2024-02-27 01:43:49 GMT from United States)
'Artificial Intelligence' has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires 'thinking' but has failed to do most of what people and animals do 'without thinking'...that, somehow, is much harder.--Donald Knuth
“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”― Edsger W. Dijkstra
38 • Privacy and AI, Ay! Ay! Ay! (by Mr. Moto on 2024-02-27 01:56:26 GMT from Philippines)
@35, Agreed on the paranoia and fears of AI. However, I do limit any sites or apps that require signing in to those which are necessary. I keep a couple of disposable email addresses for signing in purposes. Guess which addresses get loads of spam, sometime so much that I have to dispose of them. Someone is indeed passing on information.
@17, Regardless of whose fault it is, I by-pass any websites that require disabling ad-blockers (or signing in) unless they are an absolute need. Not out of fear of privacy violation, or whatever, but simply because they are annoyances, and there are enough of those on the web even with ad-blockers.
@21, "Stephen Hawking" Look up the fallacy of authority. While undoubtedly a genius, Hawking was a physicist, not a computer expert. Even in their own field, geniuses can be wanting: See Einstein and quantum mechanics. I'd take Elon Musk's opinion more seriously, except he's gone on to try and develop his own. In any case, "full" AI is still a dream, and may be just a pipe-dream at that. These present things are advanced learning algorithms that can communicate in human language. Any "dumb" computer, given enough power, access and authority can destroy humanity. Movies were made about it: "Colossus: The Forbin Project", "WarGames". I'd still put my bets on good old humans as world destroyers..
39 • Use mcfly not warp (by mcflier on 2024-02-27 02:12:43 GMT from United States)
Please for the love of Bob! We can do better than a proprietary terminal that requires an account and a login. If there was a FOSS AI that reads man pages and provides shell tips locally, that would be much more interesting.
I'll admit that clicking on files to open them is nice - that's why I use Konsole.
For a real AI-powered shell utility, try mcfly. It uses a neural network to provide better suggestions for Ctrl-R history search.
40 • Warp AI (by Mark E on 2024-02-27 11:05:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Seems like a constructive use for AI, one that isn't (mis)used to dominate, deceive or disempower people like some other freely available AI I could mention and which we hear about constantly in the news.
Not sure about having to sign up though, that's a bit of a non-starter for me. If it was free of ties I'd probably give it a try as it's would save a lot of time searching Stack Exchange etc. I worry it would make me lazy though!
41 • Warp (by Dr.J on 2024-02-27 12:09:02 GMT from Germany)
It is not so easy to comment on Warp.
i think that if you look back a thousand years from now, you will see a paradigm shift sometime in the 21st century, i.e. a point in time when computers left their early phase behind them. this includes new hardware (quantum computers) as well as new software. At the moment, the many colorful GUIs obscure the fact that we still - and Jesse, you point this out - have not moved that far away from the DOS era. Much of what I do on my computer today is no different to what I did in the late 80s (the terminals/shells are of course more convenient with mouse control, drag'n'drop etc.). But it's just too early to say anything sensible about it. Let's give it a try.
The other aspect concerns the hype around AI. At the moment, humanity still has no idea what intelligence actually is and how to produce something that is intelligent. In this respect, so many discussions about the danger of AI, for example, are more real satire than necessary measures. What we are seeing is better handling of big data and a modified voice-controlled interface. That's a lot, yes. But it's not a quantum leap towards AI.
42 • MY data (by bigdataisstealingyou on 2024-02-27 13:32:58 GMT from Germany)
If someone wants to collect my data, they'd better pay me for it. Instead, they all act as if they automatically have the right to collect data, including personal stuff.
Whether I have something to hide or not is irrelevant.
43 • @42 (by kc1di on 2024-02-27 14:11:48 GMT from United States)
Right on!
I'm too old to want AI snooping in my stuff will avoid it as long as they let me ;)
44 • @35 (by Any on 2024-02-27 15:15:36 GMT from Spain)
@35 I am glad that nobody cares about you and me, but I would like if nobody cared about MY data too. In other words, if they are not interested on me why they want my data?
I do not have anything to hide BUT also what I have is none of your business.
45 • @38: Mr Moto: The fallacy of "Appeal to Authority" (a plague; it's EVERYWHERE) (by R. Cain on 2024-02-27 16:14:19 GMT from United States)
>>"While undoubtedly a genius, Hawking was a physicist, not a computer expert. Even in their own field, geniuses can be wanting...''
Congratulations on saying what has needed to be said for quite some time; not only here but in a LOT of other places...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.”--(RPF)
...and...
“I believe that a scientist looking at [a problem outside his area of expertise] is just as dumb as the next guy.” (paraphrase)― Richard P. Feynman
“Children must be taught HOW to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead
46 • Data (by Friar Tux on 2024-02-27 15:59:32 GMT from Canada)
@35 (Joseph Mitzen) I find this data collection/privacy thing laughable. People flapping their gums without really checking into the whole data collection thing. Did you notice that even AFTER your excellent comment, they're STILL going on about "NOT MY DATA, YOU DON'T". Laughable. Data collection has been going on since forever. It is the way any good business stays ahead of its customers. True, it was a bit different before the Internet came along. My mother used to go to the local grocery/dry goods store, when I was a kid. The owner always knew her by name, what her usual purchases were, how many kids she had, even what each of us kids preferred as a treat. He knew our sizes (including Mom and Dad's), and pretty well everything about us. THAT was far more personal data than is collected by apps and websites, today. And we didn't mind telling him that info because it helped HIM serve US. Most of the data collected, today, is for the same reason - the user's convenience. I !
like to use Google as an example. Google knows where I live, because of data collection. Therefore, it gives me results in my area, not like DDG* that sent me to a brand named store in Hawaii when I live in Saskatchewan, Canada. Google also knows, or seems to, the stuff I've purchased/searched for in the past and makes recommendations accordingly, not like DDG* that shows random stuff - like Viagra when I'm looking for laptops.
* (Yes, I tested out Duck Duck Go (DDG) but gave up due to all the silly suggestions and search results. I also tested a few other search engines and went back to Google.)
47 • warp AI (by PracticalPenguin on 2024-02-27 16:59:25 GMT from Croatia)
I enjoy the manical raving squealing of fsf fanatics.
All my support to any AI implementation in linux
48 • Privacy (by Denethor on 2024-02-27 20:29:08 GMT from Bosnia and Herzegovina)
The readers commenting against data privacy are either really naive and narrow minded or worse, government agents or bots. When I say government I don't necessarily refer to the elected one... Look in your favorite corporate search engine (all of which are government funded and made into giants) about the correlation between privacy and freedom.
49 • Warp (by Ludditus on 2024-02-27 20:45:56 GMT from Romania)
@17/@Jesse:
> So you're blocking content on their website and then complaining you don't see the content they are trying to show you? I don't see how that is the fault of the website.
I AM NOT BLOCKING ANYTHING! Standard Firefox on AlmaLinux, plus uBlock Origin. But WTF has an app to do with my browser?! If the app wants me to create an account from within it, it should bloody be able to let me do that!
> Just because you didn't get something to work doesn't make it bad.
When an AI-powered app isn't able to let me create an account, be it in the app or by invoking the browser, it's not just crap, it's pure $h^1te.
50 • @49 (by Titus Groan on 2024-02-27 21:41:56 GMT from New Zealand)
> I AM NOT BLOCKING ANYTHING! Standard Firefox on AlmaLinux, plus uBlock Origin.
~
uBlock Origin by Raymond Hill
Recommended
Available on Firefox for Android™Available on Firefox for Android™
Finally, an efficient wide-spectrum content blocker. Easy on CPU and memory.
~
methinks you are blocking stuff.
BTA, I am just a reader / lurker.
51 • LLM in the terminal (by DaveB on 2024-02-28 02:26:53 GMT from Australia)
I might try it as a one off experiment. However I wouldn't rely on it. I know from experience that when we rely on machines to do basic stuff like math or spelling, we forget how to do that ourselves. I'd rather use the opportunity to research and learn, rather than have a machine fix it and I learn nothing.
52 • Warp AI Terminal (by Linuxgeex on 2024-02-28 05:55:26 GMT from Canada)
As cool as it sounds, I don't trust it as I believe the chatbot function is run by sending your data to their server, so they have to be tracking everything you do in the terminal, and all the most security-sensitive stuff I do is via the terminal... so as long as the AI is being done remotely I will never trust it.. even if the software company is trustworthy - because trustworthy companies are being hacked constantly and user data being taken and misused.
53 • ai (by Romane on 2024-02-28 09:49:47 GMT from Australia)
No interest in this so-called AI - nothing more than clever and targeted programming. You want intelligence, look at a human being - no programming comes near to it.
Yes, useful, within its own sphere. Much over-hyped and excessively vaunted technology, but I will agree that is a step in the approximate direction.
54 • @46 Friar Tux: (by dragonmouth on 2024-02-28 11:47:30 GMT from United States)
"Data collection has been going on since forever."
SO WHAT?! Rape and other crime has been part of humanity forever but that does not mean we have to like or condone it. Data collection and invasion of privacy is intellectual rape.
Unless you've lived in a totalitarian state (although Canada is swiftly getting there) where the "government" knows every person you've talked with, when you got up and went to bed, when you had your last bowel movement, whether you a zit on your left butt cheek, whether your views conform to the orthodoxy, you just don't know what you are talking about.
EVERYBODY, including you whether you know it or not, has things they want to keep private.
55 • @38 Mr. Moto: (by dragonmouth on 2024-02-28 12:13:44 GMT from United States)
" fallacy of authority"
The MOST wide-spread fallacy by far and the one we fall prey to the easiest. As soon anybody (politicians, movie stars, sports stars, priests and shamans, etc) achieves a modicum of notoriety (good or bad), all of a sudden they are convinced that they are the sine quao non, alpha and omega, le dernier cri on any and every subject. Why do we think that Paris Hilton, Taylor Swift, LeBron James, Joe Biden, every ideologue and demagogue know better than we do? OTOH, just because someone is a physicist, engineer or a bricklayer, why do we assume that is ALL they know???
I would trust Hawking's opinions on AI much more than some AI developers, or some Hollywood actor, or some politician, or somebody on a discussion forum.
56 • Privacy/Data Collection (by Jerry on 2024-02-28 13:37:29 GMT from United States)
@54 and others. For me it's about WHO has knowledge of my info/habits etc. I feel badly about any government entity having data but that's society if you want to own a vehicle, drive that vehicle, have babies, learn to pilot an aircraft, have credentials of any type, etc.
Browsing data can be cut down a bit with software and other measures, but not 100% unless you're just browsing off line.
As far as the PERSONAL stuff, like warts and poop times etc, don't get Alexa or a wife.
57 • 26 (by Clarence Perry on 2024-02-29 03:16:16 GMT from United States)
I think I heard about that one. They hired a test pilot to handle testing. After a cruise around their yard, away he went down the road. Shortly came upon a traffic jam with nothing moving;. When the Test pilot pulled back on the wheel, to his surprise he continued on at speed and smashed into the rear of the next car in line.
End of this non-functioning aircraft prototype. Or perhaps a poorly designed auto.
58 • Good review of Warp AI terminal! (by Drew Ames on 2024-02-29 20:30:59 GMT from United States)
Thank you for the great review of the Warp AI terminal.
"AI" is a very broad and inexact term (a point that John Scalzi makes in his blog, while commenting on a video by Vox here: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2024/02/28/you-could-be-using-ai-right-now/). This use of AI seems to be very focused and helpful. This kind of contextual help coupled with natural language processing could be a huge help to a lot of people who want to be more proficient with the command line.
I've been seriously using GNU/Linux since 2006, compiled software, done my own dependency checking -- including for QGIS!, built LFS twice, and created bunch of bash scripts that work pretty well. I've gotten comfortable with the command line.
But, I don't think I've ever used awk when it hasn't been part of instructions I'm following for something. I usually have to look up the syntax and options for the find command. And so forth. So for all but the most common tasks I do from the command line, I have to reference man, info, or do a web search. Within that context, Warp terminal seems to be pretty useful!
I do have concerns about it not being free software. More importantly, I have concerns about the ethics of AI training. What sources did they train this AI on? Was it all free and open data like man pages and info files, or . . . . what?
Still, this looks like an interesting project that bears further interest.
59 • AI (by Brian59 on 2024-02-29 21:03:40 GMT from United States)
Today's AI = Bias opinions of the creator and/or their personal goals.
60 • @55, dragonmouth--that falacy of logic called 'Appeal to Authority' (by R. Cain on 2024-03-01 17:47:43 GMT from United States)
>>“Why do we think that every...demagogue know[s] better than we do?”
This is, quite simply, a fact of the human condition, due to most people's inability, lack of desire, and laziness to think for themselves. It is, quite simply, too much trouble to be a critical thinker; it's easier to not have to think.
To your credit, you included "demagogue". And "bricklayer".
Eric Hoffer, who was a common laborer and longshoreman when he was 'discovered' very late in life, has become known as a veritable philosophical jewel; one of the better philosophers of our modern age (see his book, "The True Believer"), and had a lot to say about demagogues (Look up the subject on your own; a demagogue is an extremely scary and very dangerous individual. Most would classify a demagogue as definitely a psychopath, and most definitely as the textbook definition of 'sociopath'.)
Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue
Some quotes of Eric Hoffer--
"The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world."
"It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak."
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." [sound familiar?]
"I CAN NEVER FORGET THAT ONE OF THE MOST GIFTED, BEST EDUCATED NATIONS IN THE WORLD, OF ITS OWN FREE WILL, SURRENDERED ITS FATE INTO THE HANDS OF A MANIAC."
Number of Comments: 60
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