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Linus Torvalds Working On A Hefty Linux Kernel Improvement With Claude Code
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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My issue isn't with using AI to work on the Linux Kernel. My issue is working on the kernel with proprietary AI which enables Sam Altman to claim Millennium Prizes.
I completely agree, using an open model would be far more inline with the spirit of open source.
Yeah, I’m quickly seeing a future where stuff like this AI rewrite of the Adobe suite may need to be distributed as the model that makes the software and not the software itself. If that becomes the case then we really will have entered into a world where tech bros control everything as you will quickly find yourself in a world where you can’t use the software if you don’t have the compute to make it.
I can see a completely different kind of future where local models that run on commodity software get good enough for what most people need to do. At that point we'd be in a world that Stallman envisioned with every user having full control over what's running on their machine, and being able to build whatever features they want. We already see how it's becoming trivial to reverse engineer complex apps like Photoshop, or to crack PS5 games using LLMs. We are likely end up in a world where closed source is dead because code itself no longer has any value because anybody can copy and reproduce any application trivially.
And we are already starting to get there. Qwen 3.8 27b is comparable in terms of capability to Opus 4.6 which was a frontier model just half a year ago. If Qwen 4 gets to about Opus 5.5 level sometime next year, that's going to be good enough for making vast majority of software that people need. After that it's just a matter of further optimization or hardware getting better so it can run on most computers. But just to reiterate, it's already running on consumer grade hardware, and it can do real work today.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that the necessary level of compute will be made available to the average person. We are already well into a paradigm where the average “PC” is an iPad or similar, with Google locking down Android and Microsoft… being Microsoft, I just don’t have any optimism that the future will have the same kind of access to personal computing power or even software access. The “tin-foil hat” part of my brain says that the purchasing years worth of chips output is part of a conspiracy to keep consumers and potential competitors at bay more than it’s a requirement for new models.
I hope I am wrong, but I am not holding my breath.
There are already chips being developed specifically for running LLMs, so it's almost certain this will become akin to having a GPU in the future.
And this tech is now being developed in China as well, so you might not have to rely on western hardware either going forward. Chinese companies are building stuff on top of RSIC-V like the Alibaba chip I linked above, and I fully expect there will be a lot of focus on Linux as China continues to decouple from the US tech stack.
It looks like many AI skeptics have been having a change of heart and maybe some growing dread. You spend the time and it streamlines through the tough problem and it cracks firmware, builds valid specs, reverse engineer enterprise software, it’s been an interesting week.
In some ways I think it might be good, perhaps a significant decrease in proprietary prison cage ecosystems. But at the same time, I have an ever growing dread that we are jumping off the knowledge cliff. The most experienced people are seeing revolutionary productivity, while the least experienced are gaining more capability without the foundational knowledge.
The future may have students who learn nothing, know nothing, and worse they will be happy with nothing.
I’m ready to unplug and live a near Amish lifestyle. Fuck modernity.
How the education system adjusts to this tech will be interesting to watch. I expect that humans who understand how stuff works is going to be a requirement for the foreseeable future, and societies will inevitably adjust. There's always been panic and chaos every time new a disruptive technology has been invented, but humanity inevitably adjusts to it. I don't see any reason to think this will be any different.
I’d say there is something to panic about. Look at the hand made lace economy vs the Industrial Revolution, the outcome is nearly the complete loss of a skill or art form. Now take what the trend is with these LLMs, we are outsourcing the hard thinking, the struggle, the thing that forces us to expand our knowledge to a device that can do all of that 90% faster; what will the outcome be? Sure there are some people making lace by hand, but as a hobby, will we still have people in the future who will read text and write letters on paper as a hobby in the future?
Just because people spent a lot of time learning a specific skill doesn't mean it has intrinsic value to it. The reason most people aren't making lace by hand is because it's more efficient to automate the process. But nothing stops people learning skills because they enjoy doing them even if these have been automated. I do kenjutsu, it has no practical application, but I enjoy it. I don't see what the problem here is to be honest.
The tech bros have insane GPU lease agreements. More than they can reasonably afford/use. When "amateurs" can recreate photoshop, 1000x "free" (would be wasted) compute at a better photoshop they control is something they can do too, and beat OSS and adobe. There are capable decompiler to readable/organized source code agents now too. At one point, the LLM labs can stop releasing new models, and just steal everything themselves.
They can’t do that unless they all stop releasing new models. And that isnt happening. As China is basically ignoring the US.
The top US labs, if their model progress is sufficient to permit its customers to "steal software", can instead of releasing new models use them to steal software for themselves.
It's a good thing Sam Altman isn't Anthropic !
nitpicking doesnt change the point being made. A corpo getting more control over FOSS is a huge loss for everyone