I started using Debian full-time a year and half ago. It was a very frustrating experience initially and I leaned on LLMs heavily for advice. It was pretty hit or miss initially, and still occasionally gives wrong advice, but it has become much more helpful as the models have progressed. I have been able to restore a broken bup backup, learned the innards of systemd, troubleshoot scripts not launching correctly, optimized my Wayland config, correct fstab boot errors, configure my openWRT router, etc. Obviously I can just blindly copy/paste, but because I ask questions and try and tie things together, I learn along the way as well.

Currently taking a stats course and use the paid version of Claude to check/correct my workings when I do an exercise outside of the course. Also, it’s great for explaining concepts in relatable terms. For example I was having trouble understanding confidence intervals, but told Claude to explain it using Steph Curry’s 3pt shooting % as example.

There are going to be a lot of people left behind because they haven’t kept up w/ the rate of progress and still see LLMs as they were when they first launched.