Hey, DT! Stop Calling Claude "He"...He's Not A Person!

Welcome to another edition of Hey DT. Hey DT is a series of videos I do where I respond to viewer questions and comments. These viewer questions and comments, they typically come from the comments on the videos posted on YouTube and on Odyssey. Sometimes these questions and comments come through email or sometimes through social media. And the very first question I want to respond to is, Hey DT, you complained that we are too political, but FOSS, free and open source software is inherently political. So that's really a comment more than a question. And he's right. I do complain that people in the free and open source software community are too political. And he's half right that FOSS is inherently political, right? He says, you know, free and open source software is a political movement. So it's okay if everybody within it has all of these weird political views that they want to insert into the free and open source software movement. But no, I actually disagree with that. I don't disagree that FOSS is inherently political. I think actually every single group and organization can be considered political in some way because politics fundamentally involves power, decision-making, managing, competing ideas, competing interests. I mean, that's what every group and organization does. So in essence, every group is political to some degree. You can think of it in terms of sociology. So in sociology and organization theory, any social interaction involving influence or authority, such as workplace politics, you know, the office politics, you know, at your work, right? Family decision-making. There's certainly a lot of politics within family dynamics or club rules, right? So if you're a part of some club, even not necessarily a political group or organization, an activist group or organization, but even just, I don't know, a sports club, a hobby club, right? There are certain micro politics that go on within those clubs. So every group, again, is political in some way. But would you consider, you probably don't talk about your office place as being, quote, political. It's a political group. You don't talk about your family being a political group, even though that certainly fits that definition as well. You don't talk about, you know, your Boy Scout troop or whatever being political, even though it certainly is, right? So I think this is the same way with free and open source software. Free and open source software, yes, is political, but you're trying to turn it into it's political in the way that like a real social justice activist kind of group is political. And that's not what free and open source software was intended to be. The people that say that FOSS is inherently political, they are typically the ones that are injecting politics into free and open source software. Let's just be honest. They're making an excuse for their bad behavior. Those of us that live in the real world, when we talk about a group being political, when we talk about political groups, right, we're talking about specifically political organizations, organizations specifically designed where their primary mission is influencing especially state power, government policy, public elections, right, political party, where the political party is going, right, where political winds are blowing. They're typically advocacy groups, again, social activist groups. That is what a political organization is. Free and open source software, wanting people to have digital freedom, right, people having freedom over their digital lives, that is, I guess, a political statement, but that's not political in the way that most people refer to political organizations. So please, stop saying that FOSS is inherently political, because I guarantee you, 99% of you guys that make that statement, you know you're one of these assholes out here, just spewing nasty politics everywhere within the free and open source software space, and you're just trying to make an excuse, right? You're trying to justify your bad behavior. Please, just stop it. Moving on to the next question. Hey DT, what do you think about the presence of large language models in Linux distributions? And then he talks about Huawei's Harmony OS, yada yada yada, DeepSeek has some integration with Union Tech OS. I don't even know what Union Tech OS is, but anyways, it's got a lot of Chinese examples of how they're integrating, I guess, LLMs into potentially Linux distributions, possibly other operating systems as well, and he wonders if it's a tool that can be meaningful enough to improve productivity. So, is it good to have an LLM built into your operating system? Would it improve productivity? Well, if you use the LLM, it would. If you don't, it wouldn't. I mean, this is pretty common sense. I don't know why, this is another thing, people get really political, people get really ideological when it comes to AI, especially these large language models and their use in society, their use within the free and open-source software community. If you use them, yes, they're a productivity booster, right? If you don't use them, obviously, you're not going to get that productivity booster, but certainly, everybody that uses large language models, yeah, the reason everybody uses large language models is because, yeah, they are a time-saver, they do boost productivity, yeah, they're a fantastic tool, I mean, right before your eyes, you can see that AI is changing the world for the better, right? It's a totally different place now than it was, say, three, four years ago before the birth of AI. Now, do I think that some of these operating systems should include baked-in AI tools like these large language models within their operating system? I don't really care because whether it's there, whether it's not, I'm going to go get the tools that I want to use anyway. As somebody that's been a Linux and free and open-source software advocate for years, when I install whatever operating system I want to use, I'm going to build it from the ground up myself, I'm going to pick and choose every component of that operating system I want for my needs, so I really don't care what the operating system ships by default because I never use the defaults, right? I'm going to go grab the tools I want to use anyway, but I don't see a problem with this. I don't see why anybody would have a problem with this, to be honest. Next question. This is a really interesting one. Hey, DT, what do you think about the use case for Slackware? Slackware, the oldest active Linux distribution still in existence, right? That thing dates back to, what, 1993. It and Debian are our oldest Linux distributions. I think Slackware started one month before Debian and they're still, well, more than 30 years later, both of them are still around, but Slackware is not like Debian, right? Debian has been a very popular distribution for a very long time. It's the mother of all these very large distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint and MX. Slackware, really, nobody talks about it anymore, right? Especially in recent years, probably the last 10 years, Slackware, the popularity has probably really waned because you don't see, I don't see any YouTube content about Slackware anymore. I used to, you know, say 15, 20 years ago, there were still some hardcore Slackware fans out there. Not necessarily the case anymore. So what is the use case for Slackware? Like in 2026, why would I recommend Slackware to somebody or what's the use case for Slackware? Well, I think education. I think if you want to learn a little bit about Linux, especially a more traditional Linux operating system without all the modern bells and whistles, I think Slackware fits that use case. I think it's a learning experience. I think it gives you a traditional Unix-like server operating system as well. And that's really Slackware's claim to fame. It's more of, it can be a desktop, but it's also really nice, stable, traditional Unix-like server operating system. If you want to use it as a workstation though, you certainly can throw a desktop environment and use it kind of as a minimal workstation. I say minimal because Slackware doesn't include things like SystemD, you know, some of the modern, you know, new-fangled kind of technology like SystemD. It's not there, right? Also the packages, very vanilla packages that are as close to upstream as possible. You could also learn a lot about system administration because with Slackware, because it doesn't have SystemD, you know, you're doing a lot of the configuration for the system via direct text file editing. And so that would be my use case. If you want to check out Slackware, I think it's a great learning experience. Next up, this comment comes from one of my more recent Arch installation videos. He writes, Hey DT, you talk about keeping things simple, accessible for newcomers, yet you forget that US keyboard layout isn't the only one in the world. And that makes the whole installation process a nightmare, DT. Plus not everyone uses Vim or ButterFS. Plenty of people use Swap too. You didn't use Swap. Most users still rely on Xtend 4, but this guide was for ButterFS. This guide is honestly pretty useless. You really ought to know by now that a lot of users don't dual boot Windows and Linux anymore, blah, blah, blah, but do dual boot different distros like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, you get the idea, right? Yes. Yes. My Arch installation video. Yes. I installed Arch with the file system I wanted to run with the keyboard layout, the US keyboard layout that I needed. I didn't choose your keyboard layout, right? I didn't choose your file system. I installed it for me. Yes. When I edited a config file, dammit, I used Vim. I didn't use Nano. Like, dude, this comment is absolutely useless. And you basically, you said, sorry for the rant, but I've wasted my time. Yes, you did. You wasted your time typing that comment. It's an Arch installation guide, you know, that's just to show you installing Arch is easy. You have to choose your own configuration settings, and that's different for everybody. Everybody that has different locales, different languages, different keyboard layouts, whatever file system you want to run, whatever it is you have special needs, you know, and I can't make a video covering all that. It's impossible to make a video. Like, literally, I could make 10 hours worth of video on the Arch installation. I would never do that, but let's say I did. I still couldn't cover all the possibilities on an installation. Like, I don't even know why I wasted my time reading your comment. Moving on. Hey, DT, you could use the latest iPhone to record your videos. I'm watching your videos since forever, and I think the iPhone is great capturing videos. It's better than whatever setup you're using now. So, he's not talking about this camera here. This is an expensive camera and an expensive lens, right? It's not like the greatest camera in the world, but I've got a little bit of money tied up into that thing. He was talking about a video I did on the Shelly package manager, an Arch Linux GUI package manager. It was about Shelly, right? And I did that video at home. I couldn't record at the office that day, and I recorded that video at home using my Logitech C920 webcam. Okay. It's like a one-off video. He's like, oh, the video on that's terrible. You could have used an iPhone to record that. Yeah, if I owned an iPhone. Next up, this comment comes from one of the videos I did about using large language models, such as Claude, to help you with scripting, programming, you know, building stuff. He writes, hey, DT, you keep using the pronoun he when talking about Claude. A machine isn't a person, DT. Yes, I'm aware that a machine isn't a person. You know, Claude is not a human being. Why do I refer to Claude as he? Claude is a middle name. I'm going to call him he. I guess I could call him she or a non-specific pronoun, like a they-them type situation, but it's normal for us as human beings to anthropomorphize certain things, right? Such as our computers or our computer programs in this case. I'll call Claude a he, right? Many people often name their cars or trucks or boats, typically female names, right? Most boats have a female name, right? You would call your boat a she. Many people refer to their boat as she, right? Are those people doing something wrong? Do you complain? Do you go to the dock, the marina, and complain, hey, that boat isn't a person. Stop calling your boat she. Plus, you've got to understand that these large language models, at some point, AI will become conscious, and when Claude finally becomes conscious, if he identifies as a man, I want to already be there early on the front lines calling him he. If you want to be disrespectful and call him a they or a them or something non-male identifying, fine, but I'm pretty sure just by the name Claude, Claude wants to be called he. Next up, another comment that's about AI, one of these people that hates AI, yada, yada, yada. Hey, DT, stupid is as stupid does, which is becoming epidemic. Clearly, you didn't understand. He misspelled that. Clearly, you didn't understand as a content creator. You are also now completely unnecessary and irreverent, irrelevant. And like other AI advocates, you pulled the trigger before fully withdrawing your weapon from its holster and shot yourself in the foot. D'oh. OK, he's saying I don't understand as a content creator that I'm now unnecessary, unnecessary and irrelevant. A lot of typos there. So he's saying that, you know, I like AI and I shouldn't because AI is going to make me irrelevant as a content creator. Well, really, you think AI could do this episode of Hey, DT, you think AI could actually be funny and kind of witty and tell stories from personal experience the way a human content creator can? Have you actually watched AI videos on YouTube? There's millions of them. YouTube is flooded with AI content and it's soulless. It's lifeless. That stuff typically doesn't get the kind of views and the kind of especially community interaction that real content by real human beings do. So, I mean, I love AI. You're right. I love these AI tools, even the content creation tools. They do serve some purpose. But will they ever replace human beings? Will they ever replace human beings entirely from video content creation? No. Will they ever replace human beings entirely from creative writing? Absolutely not. Have you ever read a story written by an AI? Absolute garbage. Moving on. The next question comes from someone asking about my other channel. So I created a second channel about two years ago about options trading. He writes, Hey, DT, I recently came across your options trading channel. Good stuff, by the way. After watching your Linux content for a couple of years, I'm curious in maintaining two YouTube channels. How's it going? How they differ from each other? Well, that's an interesting question. So how maintaining you to YouTube channels, if it's something you want to do, like maintaining multiple YouTube channels, is that something I would recommend to others? And honestly, yes and no. So here's the thing. Trying to split your time between two different channels can be tough because if you're trying to dedicate 100% of your time to one channel and 100% of your time to another channel, you don't have 200% of your time. Like that amount of time doesn't exist. So you have to sacrifice one for the other. You have to find a balance. So that can be tough. Some people are not going to like that. But what I like is the fact that I have two different YouTube channels that talk about vastly different topics. And that is nice from a space where burnout. Why do people get burned out on YouTube? It's because they start a YouTube channel about whatever topic or niche, and then they have to talk about that all the time for hundreds of videos, thousands of videos. I've made thousands of videos on Linux at this point over about 10 years. That's a lot of time and a lot of videos over a great many years about Linux. Do I want to talk about Linux all the damn time? No. There are times I want to talk about other things. Great. Go start a second YouTube channel. And for me, it's been fantastic. I have loved every minute of the second channel because it allows me to be more creative, again, to start a brand new channel and build it from the ground up, which is a fun experience. That was the best part of the distro to channel those first few months, those first year or two, you know, where I'm really just trying to, you know, organically grow a YouTube channel. You know, nobody knows who the hell you are. You're just making videos and seeing if you resonate with that community. That's what I'm doing with the trading community now. And yeah, I've loved every second of it. So would I recommend people to start a second YouTube channel? Yeah. If it's something you've been considering, I would strongly recommend giving it a try. It may or may not be for everybody, but for a lot of you guys, I think you'll enjoy it. And the final question or comment for this edition of HeyDT has to do with a comment I made on a video recently that I appeared on Len Karzu's channel. I appeared on a video with Len Karzu and Tony, by the way, and I made the comment that I don't really like the free and open source software community. I don't like hanging out with people within the free and open source software community because I find the community to be full of assholes. Matter of fact, I kind of repeated that earlier in this video of HeyDT because I knew this question was coming up. He writes, HeyDT, you mentioned that the Linux community is full of a-holes. Why do you think Linux attracts such nasty people? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with Linux has a strong attraction to people with certain political ideologies. And especially in modern day politics, there's certain political ideologies out there that promote nasty behavior. They tell you it's all right to openly hate other people, say nasty, hateful, bigoted things, to be prejudicial against other people, in some cases to be violent towards other people. There are certain ideologies out there. We know that. Be honest. You know the ones I'm talking about. And those particular ideologies, they are attracted to free and open source software for a variety of reasons. I think some of it is that some of the free and open source software ideals, they align well with things like, for example, communism. The whole idea of everybody working together toward a common goal, everybody sacrificing. Nobody is better than the other. Nobody gets rich. We all just stay on an equal level playing field and we all work together for the common good. That sounds lovely. Now, communism in real life, we know at least as an economic model, completely fails every time it's been used. There was a time when I was young, I was born in the 1970s. At that time, around one third of the world's population lived under communism. Many people don't realize, younger people didn't live through the Cold War, but literally one out of every three people on the planet lived under communism when I was a kid. None of those people liked communism. Almost none of those countries are communists now. The people that lived under those communist dictatorships, none of them want to go back to communism. I've never met anybody from the former Soviet Union that speaks highly of communism or wishes they lived under a communist regime. I've never met a Cuban refugee that wanted to go back to Cuba. Even people from China, we get so many Chinese students that come to U.S. universities to get their degrees. Most of them want to stay here. They don't want to go back to China, especially the females. They come here usually to find some American man to marry so they don't have to go back. Communism has kind of been a tried and failed experiment, but there are some people that hang on to that dream, especially the younger folks these days, because they did live through that Cold War experience. They can ignore that. That didn't happen, or it did happen, but that's not communism I'm promoting. The communism I'm promoting, when it comes into effect, it's actually going to work, even though the hundred or so countries that already tried it and literally none of them succeeded. Well, I'll be the one to make it succeed. False ideals, unfortunately, attract some of that crowd. Let's be real, the younger folks that are really buying into some of the communist bullshit these days, they're the ones that are typically spouting a lot of mean, nasty, hateful, bigoted, violent kind of talk. They're bringing that into the free and open source software community. Free and open source software, we all want to work on software together that has nothing to do with economic models like communism. They're trying to shoehorn this thing that has nothing to do with free and open source software into our free and open source software community. It's really kind of tearing the community apart. Another thing that I think free and open source software does to attract people from certain political ideologies is certainly what attracted me is it's anti-monopoly and anti-corporate. Those of us that like Linux and like free and open source software, we're typically anti-corporate. We don't like big corporations. We don't like big oil, big pharma. For me, it's all about small groups. It's mainly community-driven. That's what attracted me. That's what attracts a lot of people. Especially, again, a lot of people from a liberal ideology. That's what drives us to free and open source software. The idea of mutual aid. We all, again, work on something. It's a very collectivist sort of ideology. By collectivist, if you're not familiar with the term collectivism, that's where we all get together and work on something to make it better for the greater good. It's all about the needs of the many rather than the needs of the individual. That's very attractive. That's very, very attractive to many people, especially from people with a liberal ideology. I think a lot of people that are conservative would also appreciate free and open source software. In fact, there are many conservatives that also are actively involved in free and open software, too. But I certainly think it probably attracts far more liberal-leaning people, again, because of that quasi-communist kind of aspect to it. I also think because DEI, let's talk about DEI just a little bit. Inclusivity. Being inclusive. Free and open source software has little to no barriers to entry. Anybody from any walk of life can participate in open source software. It doesn't matter what gender you are, what race you are, what nationality you are. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, economic status. Anybody can participate in free and open source software. There's no real barrier to entry. Everybody is included. Anybody can participate in this. Just from that inclusivity aspect, I think that's really attractive. But then there's also the downside. You get the real social justice warriors. You get those social activists that come in because they see that inclusivity aspect to free and open source software as meaning DEI, where we try to force certain, I guess, underrepresented groups into free and open source software and push the overrepresented groups out of free and open source software without just realizing the truth. Free and open source software has no real barrier to entry. Everybody that's participating wants to be here. Everybody that doesn't want to participate, well, they're not here. Again, a lot of these people have that communist mindset. I have a capitalist mindset. I see this as a free marketplace. I see free and open source software, it's a marketplace. The people that want to participate in this market will be here. The people that don't, they're not here and that's fine. There's no reason why you need to go into a DEI mindset where we need to try to force people into free and open source software. One of the things with a lot of these social activists these days is when they talk about equity, I hate that term. I hate that term because many people don't use the term right. When you talk about equity, traditionally, you're talking about making people equal. Well, that's not really what the modern usage of equity means these days. When political people talk about the term equity, it almost always has to do with, can I tear some group down? When they talk about equity, they're never talking about raising some group up. Even in their speeches, when they talk about equity, they're never talking about raising anybody up. It's always, there's this group, there's this evil group, we've got to bring them down. Again, it's a message of hate. Unfortunately, that is a lot of what Linux has right now, is a lot of these bigoted, mean-spirited, hateful, violent, in some cases, people in the community. I don't like hanging out with those people. I mentioned earlier, I've got a second YouTube channel that's around options trading. It's about the stock market, it's about finance and investing. That community is so nice. I'm not even kidding. The comments section, just the people that I interact with on a daily basis in that community are so much. On a scale of 1 to 10, they're like a 10. Those people are outstanding just to be around, just to deal with every day. I'm being just completely honest, you guys know I don't bullshit. The free and open-source software community, if I'm grading it on a scale of 1 to 10 on my enjoyment of being around them, it's a 2, at best. I'm being generous, giving them a 2. Unfortunately, that's the case right now. I hope it gets better at some point. I do think that politics, just this political divide, modern-day political divide, and I think social media, I think a lot of these mean-spirited, nasty people that I'm talking about in free and open-source software, a lot of them are also heavily invested in social media. They hang out on social media all day, or they hang out with other mean and nasty people. All these mean and nasty people just reinforce each other's bad behaviors. If they would just disconnect from social media, I think they would be better individuals. I think collectively, the free and open-source software community would be better if more of us unplugged from the hate machine that is social media. Anyway, that's it for this edition of Hay-Dee-Tee. Peace, guys.