Now that Debian is embracing AI anyone have any anti-AI distro recommendations?

I'd say wait and see what they actually do. People are super trigger happy with shitstorms these days. But maybe wait for them to actually do something bad?!

There's this list of distros that actively reject AI/LLM contributions.

There's also this list with a few more not listed in the first.

Also found that AntiX also rejects AI usage based on a conversation about it in their forum, but they are based on Debian, so...

Maybe this is the push you need to . . . Yes, maybe it’s time for . . . FreeBSD.

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Damn it I was just asking myself the same question. I don't expect it to be easy to find one that's anywhere near as good as Debian but without that one problem. I think a lot of them won't have any firm policies yet.

I had another look and I think it's basically down to Gentoo. If you're in for the BSDs, you got NetBSD as well. And OpenBSD seems to be anti AI-contributions as well. I didn't really find anything else with a strict No-AI policy.

• https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy
• https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html

Surprisingly only been mentioned once, but Chimera! It's weird and strange and brilliant!

If you want something slightly more normal (well, actually, it's not any more normal, just more common), then you can get PostmarketOS installed on anything if you go outside the documentation a little (it's really not hard, pmbootstrap is quite a good utility). If you take that route, I recommend OpenRC as not only is PMOS anti-AI, but so is OpenRC!

Gentoo, but I think this isn't the end of the world that you think. I don't like AI but as others said, think Debian will do something at least reasonable. Also, I think there is a distinction between LLMs/AI and the crap companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, etc.

be mad but at the right thing

Gentoo, postmarketOS, GNU Guix, Chimera Linux? Not seeing myself abandoning Debian because of that decision though.

Gentoo gang rise up!

I think it'll get harder and harder to find 'pure' distros. For a while you can maybe rely on something similar to Gnu linux-libre kernel that removes proprietary blobs, or BSD, or Gnu Herd kernels etc, but linux-libre is already a pain if you need certain hw drivers, and eventually an anti-ai kernel will become crippled even worse, and it will become too hard to keep track of what kernels/parts of kernels is AI assisted code or not.

In the future, more and more new features will be from ai assisted code, and pretty soon, the anti-ai kernel will lose out to ai-assisted kernels in features, speed and soon stability (bug-finding etc).

The same goes for the rest of the distros that tries to avoid ai-assisted tools and code, and you/others will imho get completely swamped by this transformation. In fact, you will most certainly need an agent to keep constant track of this development.

I'm okay with AI, but I kind of feel for those trying to avoid it. Its hard enough just to avoid proprietary crap, and to me, avoiding ai-assists, is an even bigger mountain to climb. I do wish you all best of luck on that journey.

Ps. There ARE fully open models trained on fully libre with open libre data-sets, and for you - ethical data oriented - you could/should? probably accept that 'non-pure' situation, and use such an open llm to either maintain an ethical distro, or keep unethical ai-assist as low as you can get away with, for as long as you can.

That is kinda crazy yeah

Debian was always the ol reliable, the alternative to Ubuntu

Tbh I am gonna trust them and not do anything

RedHat is an AI platform and I couldnt find any sort of AI policy but heard they kinda forced their developers to use LLMs?

NixOS allows AI generated code but no comments (file) with transparency and responsibility

I may be dumb but couldnt find anything in the OpenSUSE Open Source Policy so no idea there.

Arch, Gentoo, Void, Fedora...

Debain

More performative bullshit. Debian will get along just fine, maybe with fewer bugs if the LKML and Greg KH is to be believed.

Downvote away, as you haul out your phones to ask ChatJippity where to go for dinner tonight.

I can recommend "outside".

Been working pretty well this year so far.

some form of BSD, because the entirety of the linux kernel is about to have the same attitude :

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Is-Not-Anti-AI

---

Torvalds wrote on the mailing list:

"[In response to a comment: It seems like [1] expresses a very anti-LLM position in general"]

Yes.

And no, that's not the position of the Linux kernel.

I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one. 

We've seen this movie before, when they adopted systemd. It'll be fine.

You should stop using Linux altogether if you want to be that much of an anti-AI snob. Linus is using LLMs on the kernel.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/linus-torvalds-to-critics-of-ai-coding-in-linux-fork-it-or-just-walk-away/

Debian isn't "ambracing AI"? Where'd you get that?

Ubuntu has been making plays in that direction. Not the same thing.

No. And I think that switching from debian because "Muuuh LLMs bad" is - while obviously your choice to do so - a stupid move.

You can't escape LLMs. The pandoras box is open. They will never disappear again, even if anthropic, openAI, google and meta are sucked into a black hole tomorrow (an event that I would celebrate big time), LLMs would still exists and be here. Instead of trying to avoid anything LLM-made, you should try to escape bad and abusive LLM projects. So no OpenAI, anthropic etc, and no shitty big tech LLMs in general.

At the end of the day, I don't think you will find a distro that is truly AI free. In general, you will most likely not find SOFTWARE that is truly AI free.

Are you sure you're not mixing up Debian for Ubuntu?

I'm pretty sure Debian just said they weren't going to allow AI contributions

Please stop hyping up the power of text generators. LLMs aren't predators with will of their own, they only have as much power as we are willing to cede to them.

The more afraid we are of slop doing something other than just being slop, the more power we are giving the companies (which are harmful) to actually control us. Don't help them.