I don't see how this will survive the attacker/defender gap as ls get increasingly good at cyber security and finding 0 days... but maybe it's an obscure enough is it doesn't matter?
I think even amongst the HN and Linux userbase, pop_os is still niche, let alone amongst normies who never heard about Linux. So they can afford take the high road and treat it like their personal sandbox, accepting only human written code.
But larger and more important projects like Fedora and Debian are more pragmatic with the fact that they'll have to accept AI written(but human reviewed) code, if they wish to keep up with the real world development and threats, as expressed by Linus Torvalds himself.
The thing is, the cat's out of the bag on this one now, especially in the field of pen-testing and reverse-engineering. AI can brute-force its way into projects in ways that beat even experienced researchers, so your only choice to keep up is to accept the use of AI generated fixes as a counter defense.
If that's your threat model then you shouldn't use any SW in exitance, FOSS or otherwise. In fact you shouldn't even go online, or even outside you own house, since one single bad actors exist everywhere. You can walk down the street and suddenly someone in a car runs you over(witnessed myself). And yet live goes on.
Because your comment didn't disprove that Cosmic DE isn't too niche for bad actors to get involved.
Then they shouldn't reject AI aids to help them patch vulns found by bad actors faster, no?
Consider that it's packaged for many well-known distros, so pop_os install base alone doesn't tell the whole story: https://system76.com/cosmic/download
(I wasn't able to make it work on a scrap Dell I tried it on because the GPU was too old. Booted the USB key and COSMIC greeter failed to start)
Edit: I see you posted elsewhere.
1) Firstly, your source plase? My research according to Google Gemini 3.8 Pro shows top 5 DEs are as follows:
+---+---------------+------------+-------------------------------------+
| # | Environment | Est. Share | Primary Ecosystem / Defaults |
+---+---------------+------------+-------------------------------------+
| 1 | GNOME | 45% - 50% | Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, RHEL |
| 2 | KDE Plasma | 25% - 30% | SteamOS, openSUSE, Kubuntu, Manjaro |
| 3 | Cinnamon | 8% - 12% | Linux Mint flagship |
| 4 | Xfce | 6% - 9% | MX Linux, Xubuntu, low-spec PCs |
| 5 | MATE | 2% - 4% | Ubuntu MATE, Mint MATE (GNOME 2) |
| - | Others / WMs | 3% - 5% | Hyprland, i3, Sway, LXQt, Budgie |
+---+---------------+------------+-------------------------------------+
2) Secondly, keep in mind that distrowatch is not representative of linux userbase. MX-Linux kept showing up at the top spot for many years despite being niche.
3) And thirdly, TOP 5 DE isn't really an achievement when Linux DE market share is overwhelmingly dominated by KDE Plasma and Gnome as the majority shareholders, with XFCE and Cinnamon trailing. So Cosmic DE if it somehow made the no. 5 spot, would still be ignorable sub <1% market share, as I initially claimed, basically invisible to bad actors.
"Way too defensive" how? By asking and bringing data for my PoV?
>GP replying to you was clearly trying to have a conversation
As am I, except I ask for, and also bring data to back up my PoV, instead of vague opinions.
>Chill.
Where am I not being chill?
For funsies, I threw two different DE-by-marketshare inquiries at Gemini 3.8 Pro in separate sessions and it ranked Cosmic 12th in the first and 7th in the second. Very trustworthy stuff.
Please show me what part of what I said before was not "a normal discussions" according to you?
>it ranked Cosmic 12th in the first and 7th in the second. Very trustworthy stuff.
And that disproves me how exactly? I originally showed "Cosmic is NOT a TOP5 DE", and the LLM data you posted also shows that IT IS indeed NOT a top 5 DE.
Do you have a better source than GP?
>if needed post the actual source
Define "actual source"? In good faith, I mean.
Where else do you get this information that's, quote, "actual source"?
What do you expect exactly? Do you want me to now manually parse through terabytes of information at your whim for your own convenience? Sorry, but I'm not your personal unpaid servant.
If you wish to disprove me in the comment section, then you need to do the manual work and show us that the my quoted LLMs statistics are wrong. I'm not your personal errand boy to do your bidding, 'massa'.
Did you just blindly trust the opinions of others on this topic, and yet I'm the one who has to provide peer-reviewable data for you to back-up mine? Sorry, I'm not your unpaid lackey. Try to formulate a better (counter)argument for why their baseless opinion is right, but my LLM backed up opinion is wrong, if you wish for a even-footed good-faith argument.
I also saw it now. That blog is not a representative ground truth, but just another opinion piece, which I can respect as an opinion of the blog's user base, but I can't take as an accurate real world statistic, same how aggregate opinions you read on HN are not representative of the actual real world.
I hope you can understand my PoV. You can also disagree if you want, but you'll need to bring something more than "that's wrong because LLMs sometimes hallucinate" as proof that Gemini's data is wrong in this case.
> you'll need to bring something more than "that's wrong because LLMs sometimes hallucinate" as proof that Gemini's data is wrong in this case.
actually I can say it's wrong or likely to be wrong especially if it doesn't cite the sources it uses. And if it does, then just paste the sources here instead of the LLM output. It is also unknown where it got the info and as someone else said, you ask it two different times and it gave two different answers, thus it is unreliable.
How did you verify that those people from the blog are "real"?
I also talked to real people for my own data, case in point, I asked my mom and dad which linux DE is most used, and the results came out different. Which "real people" are the ones representative for the ground truth of Linux DE sahre?
> and yours is just a hallucinated list from one of the me-too LLM vendors
How do you know it's hallucinated? Ask the LLM the population of your country? Is the answer mostly accurate or is it hallucinated in an inaccurate way?
Aren't LLMs just outputting the highest statistical probability from the aggregate of their scraped data, which in this case would be including opinions on Reddit, and every website and blog on the entire internet (including that random one posted by badc0ffee) on the Linux DE uusage topic, making it a more accurate real-world representation than just a single random blog?
You can call it "hallucinated" if you want, but that doesn't mean it's not accurate. I asked for proof that my answer was inaccurate, not that it was "hallucinated", those are two different things, and your argument didn't prove it was inaccurate nor did it prove it was hallucinated. Would you like to try again?
That is such a weird statement that I am not entirely certain where to begin. PopOS is hardly niche. Its base are all fairly common components by linux standards. And, more importantly, attackers and bad actors may other considerations in mind than sheer population size -- just to point out the glaringly obvious.
<< I think even amongst the HN and Linux userbase, pop_os is still niche
I think rather than trying to disprove it, I think I should ask why you think that? If anything, PopOS annoys me because it is just a step before ubuntu ( and ubuntu is just windows at this point ). Maybe I am defensive, because my first real distribution ( that did not share disk with windows was popos )?
Do you think Netanyahu, Trump or Xi-Jinping are somehow secretly using Cosmic DE at home, to be worthy targets?
Bad actors have limited time, lives of their own and mouths to feed as well, so they concentrate their efforts where "the fish are" if they want to PWN someone for profit.
That's why Windows was the biggest target in the past for so long and why MacOS and Linux were ignored. Because most of the fish were on Windows.
Previously, time was the most precious resource. Now its tokens, and more cheaply at at.
If you assume Mossad and NSA are Token-maxxing every single niche FOSS project out there to cast as large as possible fishnet on hacking all Average Joes on the planet just in case, then maybe using Mozilla and MacOS gets you hacked too, maybe even visiting HN and commenting here gets you hacked by some zero days you don't yet know.
Where does this open-ended paranoia argument end?
Reminder that AI is quite stupid.
I'll trust the words of groups like curl (https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/06/10/a-human-in-control/), Linux, and even the infamously anti-AI Gnome (https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2026/10/02/the-era-of-sof...) that AI is finding real vulnerabilities and you're your project a disservice by ignoring them.
Edit: Though Greg did recently have a talk (that I skimmed) where he was a little reserved on LLMs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnV_cWeoo5Q