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Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

community.openai.com

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Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#221

I find it almost funny how hostile the response is when a company actually goes through the effort of supporting Linux. Apparently shipping the Linux version is only step one, you also need to pick the right framework, use the right packaging, consume the right amount of RAM, and preferably rewrite it natively.

> I find it almost funny how hostile the response is when a company actually goes through the effort of supporting Linux.

How magnanimous: they make the effort to support the OS their entire company is based on? It's not just for training the model and hosting them: it's also to run them, where they constantly use Linux to do their thing.

Without Linux, there's no OpenAI.

So I take it the Linux community should be so grateful that OpenAI supports Linux, right?

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#222
post #148
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's not a joke, I made the mistake of installing this on my Windows machine just to test it out quickly last week. It created 2 new users and then assigned new NTFS permissions for every single file under my user directory to them. This of course wrecked havoc, ssh refused to work, several applications refusing to start and a ton of permission errors. It did this without even a warning in the background and it…

I would love to see your prompt(s) and how you managed to make it do this. I’ve been using Codex in full access mode constantly for the past couple months on a Pro plan and I haven’t had a single incident like this. I’ve used it across macOS, Linux, and Windows as well, so my usage isn’t limited to a specific setup either.

The problem doesn't exist when granting codex full access. Codex makes you choose upon first launch to "Set up default sandbox" or to "Use non-admin sandbox". The default option creates two new users and messes with NTFS permissions.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#223
Unrelated to this Linux release but I've been using the new ChatGPT desktop app since I annoying updated on accident, and I haven't had that great of an experience.

I previously really enjoyed the Codex app. It was easy for me to understand and find what I needed. The conversation view provided the right amount of information without feeling too concise or full of jargon and the typographic hierarchy made it easy to skim. The project based workflow made sense for my needs.

Ever since they combined all ChatGPT into one app though it has become a mess. It's trying to do too much in one. The settings menu is especially bloated, and I find the UI to be too complicated for the simple questions I'm asking outside of development work. I would rather just use the web interface for general use at this point. They've also been updating much of the UI to follow the same patterns as Claude, and I've not been impressed with the Claude desktop app.

To me, they are taking multiple steps backwards. I hope they eventually find their way again.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#224

I find it almost funny how hostile the response is when a company actually goes through the effort of supporting Linux. Apparently shipping the Linux version is only step one, you also need to pick the right framework, use the right packaging, consume the right amount of RAM, and preferably rewrite it natively.

HN comment quality took a nosedive recently, You can predict the comments just based on the story, almost all of them cynical and snarky remarks. It used to be a place to come and learn from technical experts.

The AI boosters have driven away all experts. They are either financially invested or mindless power users on the level of the proverbial MacOS fanboys.

Experts related to real programming topics are gone or silent. AI experts have never even been here in the first place. It is all about Electron apps, prompts, agents and other bullshit.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#225
post #90

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.

And that's not a joke, I made the mistake of installing this on my Windows machine just to test it out quickly last week. It created 2 new users and then assigned new NTFS permissions for every single file under my user directory to them. This of course wrecked havoc, ssh refused to work, several applications refusing to start and a ton of permission errors. It did this without even a warning in the background and it…

I've been using GPT through opencode for quite some time on linux. I have had a great time with getting it to help me through computer use and it has been a game changer for me.

For instance recently, media downloads on my NAS became quite a bit slower. I asked it to investigate and it quickly got back to me saying the issue was the ethernet link had been downgraded to 100Mbps from 1Gbps. It even went through journalctl to tell me when this had happened. To fix it I just had to plug an ethernet cable out and back in. Now this is the kind of thing, earlier I would have to spend an evening on. But given an open system like Linux, a well made safe model just makes it so much more accessible than having to RTFM for one off things I am sure to forget in a month.

I dont really let it run loose through my systems, and keep an eye on the thinking traces it puts out and the permissions it asks for. But now I dont have to slog through manuals and deal with gruff people on the internet. I can choose to do so after the fact, depending on how much free time and curiosity I have.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but if you use Qt like I did, you're shipping libstdc++, some other crap and Qt.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised recently that there's no solid native way to build desktop apps on Linux! I was thinking I'd build something actually native with AI but then the options were QT or or gtk...

QT and GTK are as native (and solid, I guess) as it gets, since there's no "default" UI toolkit that's shipped along with the kernel, unlike e.g. Windows or macOS. Speaking of Windows, why do they even ship browser-UI apps as a part of the OS? Do they find native Windows UI development too hard or feature-limited even with LLM assistance?

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#227

I find it almost funny how hostile the response is when a company actually goes through the effort of supporting Linux. Apparently shipping the Linux version is only step one, you also need to pick the right framework, use the right packaging, consume the right amount of RAM, and preferably rewrite it natively.

HN comment quality took a nosedive recently, You can predict the comments just based on the story, almost all of them cynical and snarky remarks. It used to be a place to come and learn from technical experts.

I don't have evidence for this, but I suspect a lot of it is Reddit refugees.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#228
I don't think its asking too much of a $1T company to not make a shitty desktop app. Especially when that companies whole moat with developers is that their tools can do our jobs better and faster.

The real reason they're using Electron is that some PM is comfortable with it and since nobody is reading the code, they use that comfort as a crutch to release most-likely working desktop app.

When the creator of a project has infinite money, infinite labor, and infinite incentive to lock more devs into their platform via skill atrophy and the product is still shit, that's the human in the loop.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#229

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

Exactly my thoughts! I was expecting a Rust app written from scratch available at least in Qt and GTK flavors , and maybe with a third and a fourth option. Don't they have agent swarms with infinite tokens?

They probably just don't see it worth the extra effort. And maybe they want to keep it in sync with the web UI.

It definitely is a fraction of the work these days to maintain three different desktop apps + two different mobile apps + a web app. But it's still a lot more work than an Electron app that is merely tweaked between platforms.

Re: Codex in ChatGPT desktop app for Linux is now in preview

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but if you use Qt like I did, you're shipping libstdc++, some other crap and Qt.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised recently that there's no solid native way to build desktop apps on Linux! I was thinking I'd build something actually native with AI but then the options were QT or or gtk...

I mean there is the no true linux argument, but covering the main stream desktops you basically have kde which is written with qt(so qt is native) or gnome which is written with gtk and both frameworks/DEs do implement other things besides "just" the gui, so you are native.
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