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.
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