Are there any AI assistants which come bundled with one of the popular distros (Debian-like, Arch, …)?
Or anything which is free (at least as in beer) and readily bundled in distro-specific installation packages?
Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
1–10 of 64 posts
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#2None. Microsoft has Copilot in preview mode in Windows and it's not very integrated apart from a chat window. I doubt GNOME/KDE will be able to dedicate enough resources to adding an assistant that is well integrated with the desktop environment any time soon.
A search in Fedora yields a single GSoC project[0] limited in scope to NetworkManager and it's not clear if anyone actually is working on that.
If the use case you're interested in is actually having the LLM doing things for you in SaaS applications, that wouldn't need deep integration but, considering Google is yet to deliver a Google Drive client for Linux, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a native Linux AI-assisted assistant.
Your best option right now is to interface with the assistants through their web interface and hope they have plugins/extensions to interact with things you want.
Other than that, some people have built prototypes running LLMs locally that talk to things like Home Assistant. But again, no deep desktop integration.
0 - https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/mentored-projects/gsoc/...
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#3None. Microsoft has Copilot in preview mode in Windows and it's not very integrated apart from a chat window. I doubt GNOME/KDE will be able to dedicate enough resources to adding an assistant that is well integrated with the desktop environment any time soon. A search in Fedora yields a single GSoC project[0] limited in scope to NetworkManager and it's not clear if anyone actually is working on that. If the use case…
"I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a native Linux AI-assisted assistant"
A simple chat window and a automated script to install a existing small modell should be doable, but sounds not very exciting to me.
But mid term, having a locally run LLM and integrated into the OS that scans my files and can summarize folders for me, would be nice. I have big folders with mixed stuff, AI would be nice to sort that. I do believe some people are working on something like this, but the bulk of it is not OS specific. And not OSS.
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#4Unrelated, but is there something like Bonzi Buddy for linux? Not the spyware part, just the friendly looking clippy-esque character that can tell you about your new e-mails, weather, or whatever? I kind of wish I had something like that.
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#5None. Microsoft has Copilot in preview mode in Windows and it's not very integrated apart from a chat window. I doubt GNOME/KDE will be able to dedicate enough resources to adding an assistant that is well integrated with the desktop environment any time soon. A search in Fedora yields a single GSoC project[0] limited in scope to NetworkManager and it's not clear if anyone actually is working on that. If the use case…
> I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a native Linux AI-assisted assistant.
On Mac when I press Command + Space, it brings up Spotlight search
That can't easily be added to be the equivalent of some kind of LLM prompt on GNOME/KDE/XFCE?
I don't quite know what you'd ask it/do with it that would be of much value? Seems like a quicker way/a wrapper around either asking an LLM questions via CLI or basically Electron wrapping HTML (like this https://github.com/lencx/ChatGPT)?
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#6None. Microsoft has Copilot in preview mode in Windows and it's not very integrated apart from a chat window. I doubt GNOME/KDE will be able to dedicate enough resources to adding an assistant that is well integrated with the desktop environment any time soon. A search in Fedora yields a single GSoC project[0] limited in scope to NetworkManager and it's not clear if anyone actually is working on that. If the use case…
"I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a native Linux AI-assisted assistant" A simple chat window and a automated script to install a existing small modell should be doable, but sounds not very exciting to me. But mid term, having a locally run LLM and integrated into the OS that scans my files and can summarize folders for me, would be nice. I have big folders with mixed stuff, AI would be nice to sort that. I do be…
> But mid term, having a locally run LLM and integrated into the OS that scans my files and can summarize folders for me
But don't most LLMs have about a max 32k token context?
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#7None. Microsoft has Copilot in preview mode in Windows and it's not very integrated apart from a chat window. I doubt GNOME/KDE will be able to dedicate enough resources to adding an assistant that is well integrated with the desktop environment any time soon. A search in Fedora yields a single GSoC project[0] limited in scope to NetworkManager and it's not clear if anyone actually is working on that. If the use case…
"I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a native Linux AI-assisted assistant" A simple chat window and a automated script to install a existing small modell should be doable, but sounds not very exciting to me. But mid term, having a locally run LLM and integrated into the OS that scans my files and can summarize folders for me, would be nice. I have big folders with mixed stuff, AI would be nice to sort that. I do be…
>scans my files and can summarize folders for me
Can you tell me what exactly you want it to do? You have a bunch of files in folders and you want the AI to tell you what exactly?
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#8pip install llm # among other, to run local or not. Yet, KDE or Gnome are yet to integrate or develop a nice API for/ to any of these.
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#9Open interpreter?
Re: Ask HN: What AI assistants are already bundled for Linux?
#10Could they just package ollama and build a Python GTK interface around the CLI interface?