Plasma in some version has removed translated name of programs. In fact, at past I can type Odkrywca (in Polish) instead of Discover (in English). Many computers have AI chips currently for LLM. Why do not allow to type: I need to install programs in menu and Plasma will suggests Discover, Yast2, etc. ? Of course, in any language? Maybe it will need to extend .desktop file format, but I think it is not necessary. We have description field.
Because implementing such a thing would be a massive project that, if the results weren’t truly excellent, would be worse than the status quo. And that’s in addition to the technical difficulty doing it and the political considerations. What political considerations? Well…
If the queries were processed locally, we’d have to come up with credible answers for difficult questions like, at the minimum, the following:
- Which model should be used?
- How well does it work on machines without an NPU or GPU? What experience should users of that hardware expect?
- How much RAM does it need?
- How much is battery life reduced by when you use it?
- How big is the model on disk?
If the queries were sent off to some server elsewhere, the questions change to:
- Which service should be used?
- Who’s hosting it and paying for it? Do they have a sustainable revenue model, or will they disappear or skyrocket their prices some day?
- What does the privacy situation look like?
- How can we produce a decent UX that keeps users informed of the above, lets them opt in, and falls back gracefully to something sensible when there’s no internet connection?
I know there’s a lot of hype around AI these days, but “just implement an LLM for semantic search” is not just a thing you do casually. It’s a massive technical and political undertaking. And in a lot of cases, the value provided to users is dubious at best.
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