Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

Post by cloudie78 » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 11:31 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #100

cloudie78 wrote: post #25

Reminder to everyone, treat these as trojans. Run them isolated from the rest of your system. Give it a full desktop in a VM if you want to, just not direct access to your system.

With exception of VSCode, because I have no choice due to some plugins, or apps required by customer projects where I have no other option as well, nothing else based on Electron pollutes my computers.

Post by nehal3m » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 11:34 AM UTC

CamelCaseName wrote: post #120

nehal3m wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re doing that anyway you might as well install a hypervisor and layer your OS on top. That way you can snapshot before your LLM with root fucks everything up again.

Sorry, what was the problem we were originally trying to solve again?

Post by odiroot » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 11:37 AM UTC

SyneRyder wrote: post #85

lucideer wrote: post #72

The most remarkable things about this announcement: - Electron based app: Electron is a framework sold on the basis of enabling rapid cross-platform development at the cost of performance. - Frontier AI company: AI is sold on the basis of enabling rapid development - App was released in February & took 6 entire months to port to Linux

I guess it's easier to solve Erdos problems and improve the lower bound of the Riemann hypothesis, than it is to solve Linux desktop app distribution.

Post by zwirbl » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 11:39 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #99

concinds wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They replaced a pretty decent native Swift Mac app (with only some chronic state management bugs), weighing ~100MB ish, with the Codex app that most people don't need, made in Electron, which takes minimum 5GB+ including filesystem cruft. Today I ran into a memory leak that froze the app and made the Renderer process take 5GB, then 10GB of RAM. That was after I asked it to only touch 3 text files in its working direc…

> They replaced a pretty decent native Swift Mac app (with only some chronic state management bugs), weighing ~100MB ish, with the Codex app that most people don't need, made in Electron. Not even a $1T dollar company wants to maintain a native Swift Mac app even though they have AI models to build native apps for every platform. Maybe they thought Electron would save them tokens to build the feature once and it work…

Post by p-e-w » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 11:43 AM UTC

cloudie78 wrote: post #121

pjmlp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With exception of VSCode, because I have no choice due to some plugins, or apps required by customer projects where I have no other option as well, nothing else based on Electron pollutes my computers.

You always have a choice to use/learn/make a different tool. It’s a prison of your own making. I’ve personally adopted a process where I structure my projects to ALWAYS keep credentials and sensitive information in a separate directory. The working copy gets rsynced to and from a dedicated VM with whatever $HARNESS.