![\"Linux](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/linus-use-2.jpg\")
Screenshot from GitHub YouTube channel\/ZDNET<\/p>\n Screenshot from GitHub YouTube channel\/ZDNET<\/p>\n
Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source<\/a> on Google.<\/p>\n ZDNET’s key takeawaysDon’t like that AI is used to develop and maintain Linux? Torvalds says: Tough!AI is part and parcel of developing Linux now, and that’s not changing.Other top Linux maintainers agree with Torvalds. AI is here to stay.<\/p>\n Many people hate AI. They don’t trust it a bit. Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, isn’t one of them. Torvalds thinks AI can be quite useful<\/a> for programming and maintenance. Indeed, AI is explicitly approved for use in the Linux kernel<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, that didn’t stop some people from wondering if AI should be used in Linux development. For example, the Zig language project<\/a> has adopted strict policies against AI-generated code.\u00a0<\/p>\n Also: ‘I’m not a programmer’ anymore: Linus Torvalds on the only two tools he uses now<\/a><\/p>\n To those who’d like to see Linux take a similar stance, Torvalds recently replied on the Linux Kernel Mailing List<\/a> (LKML), that if you can’t support using AI in the Linux kernel, you “can do the open-source thing and fork it.”<\/p>\n He’s not joking. Torvalds also wrote, “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.”<\/p>\n Why? Because “AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one. It may not have been that ‘clearly’ even just a year ago, but it’s no longer in question today.”<\/p>\n Torvalds isn’t the only one<\/p>\n As Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the Linux stable kernel, told me earlier this year, “Months ago, we were getting what we called ‘AI slop,’ AI-generated security reports that were obviously wrong or low quality.” But then, he continued, “the world switched. Now we have real reports. All open-source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they’re good<\/a>, and they’re real.”<\/p>\n Other open-source developers and maintainers agree. Starting with the 2026 frontier models, such as Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8,<\/a> AI programming is vastly improved. As Torvalds continued, “There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but ‘is it useful?’ is no longer one of those questions.”<\/p>\n Also: ‘Rust makes coding fun again’: Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman<\/a><\/p>\n That said, Torvalds knows full well that AI is far from perfect. “Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool \u2026\u00a0 But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing “La La La, I can’t hear you” at the top of your voice like some people seem to do.”<\/p>\n No, concluded Torvalds, “The solution is to make sure those LLM tools\u00a0help maintainers instead of just causing them pain. There’s no question on that side.” Therefore, while Torvalds won’t force anyone to use AI, “I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it.”<\/p>\n Some projects strongly object to the use of AI<\/p>\n What prompted this outburst was Linux developers discussing the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC)<\/a>‘s recent AI policy statement, “When Using LLM-backed Generative AI Systems for FOSS Contributions<\/a>.” In it, the SFC suggests the “best practices” for AI use in open-source projects are to “support, not just tolerate, those who outright reject LLM-gen-AI systems.”<\/p>\n Also: 7 ways AI can help with your Linux system management<\/a><\/p>\n The corner cases with this stance are what bug senior Linux kernel maintainer Theodore “Ted” Ts’o. He wrote, “If someone rejects LLM-gen-AI systems, and the LTS kernel contains patches which are automated backported, and they object, are we bound to forswear the use of automated backport technologies<\/a>? What if someone reports a bug with a kernel stack trace, and someone uses an LLM agent to analyze their bug report and find a fix?\u00a0 What does it mean to ‘support someone who outright rejects the use of LLM-gen-AI systems’ in that case?”<\/p>\n Ts’o’s position is, “I don’t think it’s obvious that we must bend over backward to oblige the needs of all patch authors.”\u00a0<\/p>\n For Linux, AI is here to stay<\/p>\n Another top Linux kernel developer, James Bottomley, answered this way: \u00a0“The contributor doesn’t get to approve the tools the maintainer uses<\/a> to assess and apply patches. If there’s AI in there, and the contributor is an AI luddite, then the patch doesn’t get applied (i.e., your right to ignore AI stops when it infringes others’ right to use it).”<\/p>\n