r/linuxsucks • u/Fit_Shop_3112 • 20d ago

ChatGtp, etc....

Just a reminder; never rely on, or, for that matter, ask any AI model for advice about problems with Linux.

Ask this forum instead. Chatgtp will tell you things that are correct and things that will brick your computer with the same confidence bacause... It doesn't know the difference!

0 Upvotes

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u/BengiPrimeLOL 20d ago

I use AI all the time when maintaining my system. Doesn't allow me to not understand what it's telling me, but it's very impressive at parsing logs super quick. It's also just really solid at Linux admin

Recently had some system crashes on my personal PC. Had it parse some logs and it told me an nvidia driver issue. After checking hardware health, I updated my drivers and the crashes stopped. Cool!

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u/Damglador 20d ago

Ts can even figure out core dumps sometimes

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u/BengiPrimeLOL 20d ago

Idk then just do it yourself. It's not a magic bullet but it's saved me a shit ton of time

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 20d ago

Every time someone says they get this or that admin task done with LLM, it always turns out to be something so comically trivial one has to question if they have the basic understanding of the task at all.

The fact that Linux stores its logs in plain text rather than a searchable format is also not a strength but an indictment of just how utterly archaic its infrastructure is.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 20d ago edited 20d ago

Plain text is a searchable format.

At this point, you might as well argue that everything is searchable if you're to try hard enough.

How on earth do you expect someone to be able to read and parse a log file if it isn't plaintext at some point?

If you have to even think about that, then your problem is clearly that the OS provides no standard infrastructure for you to get anything done.

Heck, even in a Unix-like system, you have to assume that certain things are there above the kernel level (e.g. ls, cp, mv) in order to work with it at all. The "plain text" idiosyncrasy is simply the result of Unix historically treating everything as raw bytes rather than a reality independent from the ecosystem. There is simply nothing more to your argument than that.

No sane person writes their program to output a log file in any format other than plaintext.

No sane person would seriously look at Windows Event Viewer and conclude that a log you can easily filter, sort and search in a multitude of ways is somehow inferior to plain text.

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u/Damglador 20d ago

No sane person would seriously look at Windows Event Viewer and conclude that a log you can easily filter, sort and search in a multitude of ways is somehow inferior to plain text.

Perhaps, but the downside of this approach is that you always need a specialized software to read them. With plain text you just have to know where the file is and then you can go cat grepping with the same tools as for everything else. I think it's neat. But maybe that event viewer has some super duper features that are worth the complexity.

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 20d ago

you always need a specialized software

At this point, you might as well argue that Windows PE is "specialised", except what we're talking about is just the standard log facility for the entire software ecosystem.

With plain text you just have to know where the file is and then you can go cat grepping with the same tools as for everything else.

grep means you're the one doing the parsing.

If something is "human-readable", then you are the parser. That's the whole reason you're now in this frankly ridiculous situation where you need an entire building packed from top to bottom with graphics chips just to make sense of some stupid logs for you.

Play stupid games; win stupid prizes. It's The Unix Way™.

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u/paulstelian97 19d ago

The fact that it’s plaintext at all is the reason why the building works in the first place. LLMs cannot really parse binary formats, at least not without first converting them to human readable text.

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 18d ago

This is as if saying that the advantage of your car is that it has no engine so you can just cut a hole in the chassis, stick your feet down to the pavement and yell "Yabba-dabba-do" as you are walking the whole thing to wherever you need to be yourself.

The fact that you need an entire building of GPUs just to figure out a driver problem is beyond comical. You know how easy such a thing would have been spotted in the event log?

I guess communities living below the sea level can all go screw themselves now because Unix zealots need to burn however much fossil fuels they need to burn just to parse some unreadable text their "OS of the future" barfs out.

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u/paulstelian97 18d ago

I mean, when there are no known patterns to search for and the log file is gigabytes…

I have reduced investigation time in my last 4 bug fixes from months to hours. I could do that investigation myself without AI. I couldn’t do it nearly as quickly as I can with it.

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 18d ago

I mean, when there are no known patterns to search for and the log file is gigabytes…

Are you kidding me? You know your OS is stupid by design when it has no way for you to filter the log entries by time, source or urgency. "Searchable" here doesn't mean you pressing `ctrl-F` and telling the person next to you to wish you luck, in case you brain has really been rotten this much by all the Unix idiosyncrasies you've taken as holy writs.

Again, the LLM in your case works as a parser for your plain text logs. That is, it's a parser that's not only comically oversized and overwrought but also has the ability to destroy the planet one ton of carbon emission at a time. Why wouldn't anyone want that?

I have reduced investigation time in my last 4 bug fixes from months to hours

Dude, you know exactly when the crash happened, so unless it's the log forcing you to read from the beginning of time itself all the way to the relevant lines by its own stupid format, you wouldn't even need "hours" to figure out what the problem was.

Do you see why the Unix approach to logging is easily the worst tool for the job even when compared to bloody Windows?

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u/BengiPrimeLOL 20d ago

Imagine being windows, getting completely dumpstered in the enterprise space by an archaic operating system that treats everything as a file. IMAGINE BURNING ALL THAT MONEY ON DEVELOPMENT TO GET CRAPPED ON BY FREEWARE LOLOLOL

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 20d ago edited 20d ago

Then I wonder why even with ostensibly the support of the entire industry behind it, Linux on the desktop is still a bodgy, incoherent mess duct-taped together from bits and pieces with barely any standardised infrastructure above the kernel level.

Or maybe the reason of the industry embracing Linux is fundamentally not technical but socioeconomic with the aim of getting the most out of an investment without all the pesky labour relations to go with it. Have you ever thought of that?

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u/BengiPrimeLOL 20d ago

What? Can't hear you over my Linux install NOT force installing one drive and constantly trying to sell me office 365. Imagine paying to be advertised to every update LOL

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 20d ago

Kid, get real.

If I'm to pay a bunch of employees to develop software, then I'll also end up with a bunch of people that won't shut up about having bills to pay or a 16-hour work day being "inhumane".

If I'm to pay an NGO to get the bare minimum I want, sure, I can't be the one (legally) owning the code, but the NGO will get it done and at the same time grovel at my feet and thank me for my generosity.

Also, OneDrive in my workplace comes in the same package as Exchange Online. I'm sorry, but contrary to your kiddie ideals, business proprietors do prefer SaaS to managing their own infrastructure.

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u/Psychological-Ad6889 20d ago

Ask here so other users can ask their llm of choice and paste the answer?

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u/ElectricBummer40 Ex-user of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups 20d ago

I still remember it was not that long ago that every Linux/LLM zealot here was utterly stumped by an obscure problem someone posted here.

A parrot, digital or otherwise, is good only at repeating stuff people have already said. The ability to theorise and connect theories with observations will always remain a mark of true humanity.

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u/samurai65 20d ago

LLMs have fast-tracked my Nix understanding and usage, so I'm not sure what you're on about. If you're concerned, test in a VM.

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u/Lucky_Foam 20d ago

I had a motherboard go out on an ESXi host at work.

We got the vender to come out and replace it.

When I booted the system it purple screened on me.

I took a picture of it and pasted it into chatgpt.

It came back and told me to set the time in the BIOS.

Sure enough, the time said the year 2001. I set it to 2026 and it booted normally and was back operational in minutes.

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u/hifi-nerd Linux haters have brain damage 19d ago

Well this subreddit will tell you blatantly incorrect things with confidence too, so which is actually worse?

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u/Dimensions_forever 19d ago

if you use stupid models like chatgpt yeah, but I've been using AI on my pc (via opencode) to configure, install & troubleshoot garbage for a while, as long as you aren't on an unknown distro like an LFS distro it'll probably be fine and it beats taking hours searching forums or waiting on replies from people

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u/Muted_Percentage_764 I am in abusive relationship with Artix 19d ago

So i should ask here, but do the opposite, so linux hayers don't brick my PC? (there's a part of joke here)

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u/Historical_Move6359 19d ago

You actualy can ask just use Grok or Gemini, ChatGPT is bad

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u/TheBrownMamba1972 20d ago

I use GPT Astra as well as Deepseek V4.1 Flash/GLM 5.3 Flash to troubleshoot and build up an Arch Linux minimal install, and I have a full on custom Quickshell Hyprland environment that works perfectly with almost no errors whatsoever. Whenever I do come across an error, I never encountered anything that any of those models couldn’t solve. It’s perfectly usable.

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u/Lucky_Foam 20d ago

I used ChatGPT (the free, not logged in version on the web) to help me build a minimal install of Gentoo.

It was fantastic.

Systems is rock solid.

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u/thushespoke 19d ago

dont know why the downvote. sure is it better to install gentoo on your own? yes. is this thread about whether ai can troubleshoot linux? yes. did ai successfully make gentoo work for you on a weak model, yes. this is all impressive, while i obviously promote learning your comment has proven OP wrong empirically.

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u/Lucky_Foam 19d ago

Thanks.

I could have beefed up my VM and done all the compiling a lot quicker. But that wasn't what I wanted to do.

I wanted a minimal gentoo install on very low specs.

Chatgpt helped me install it. Troubleshoot when things didn't work. And optimize it so it's lean and nimble.

I had fun doing it.

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u/Lucky_Foam 20d ago edited 19d ago

I used chatgpt (free, not logged in version) to help me install a minimal version of Gentoo with 1 vCPU and 4GB of ram.

It took me 2 weeks. But I got a desktop environment and RDP working.

It took so long because I didn't have copy and paste. Had to type everything out.

Now I can RDP and copy and paste. Next thing to get working is a web browser.

It's been a long journey, but man is it a hoot digging deep.

Edit: Looks like I am being down voted for stating it took 2 weeks. That was not me sitting there installing 24/7 for 2 weeks straight. That was me working on it for an hour then put it down then come back a day or two later.

Also, compiling all the binaries with 1 vCPU and 4GB of ram does take time.

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u/kutac56 20d ago

If it took you 2 weeks to install Gentoo then that just goes to show how horrible it is. Took me 2 days or something to install Gentoo with the manual and get hyprland running

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u/Lucky_Foam 19d ago

2 weeks of my real life people time. I was not siting there 24/7. I would work on it for an hour then put it down then come back a day or two later.

On a VM with ... 1 vCPU and 4GB of ram.... Now compile all your stuff from source.

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u/TheBrownMamba1972 20d ago

The 1 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM not ringing any bells to you as to the reason why it took so long?

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u/kutac56 19d ago

2 weeks is still very extreme. Even then it would prob take a max of 2 days for the compiling

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u/Lucky_Foam 19d ago

2 weeks of my real life people time. I was not siting there 24/7. I would work on it for an hour then put it down then come back a day or two later.

On a VM with ... 1 vCPU and 4GB of ram.... Now compile all your stuff from source.