OpenAI Brings Codex Coding Agent to ChatGPT Desktop for Linux
ChatGPT Desktop (Codex Desktop) for Linux
OpenAI has launched Codex in ChatGPT, a desktop app for Linux that brings its AI coding agent to the popular chat interface. The tool handles end-to-end engineering tasks like building features, refactoring, and migrations, and supports multi-agent workflows with parallel cloud environments. It also introduces Skills for customizing workflows and scheduled background tasks for issue triage and CI/CD. Early adopters like Wonderful, Harvey, and Sierra report significant time savings and improved code quality.
With Codex, we ship in a weekend what previously took a quarter.
- pentagrama
Interesting to see the Linux version released. On Windows, though, my experience with the new ChatGPT app since Codex was folded into it hasn't been great.
I'm a Codex user, and when it was still a standalone app it worked really well for me. Since it became part of the new ChatGPT app, the app feels noticeably slower and, at least on my machine, is currently using around 1.27 GB of RAM [1].
The old ChatGPT app, which has now been renamed "ChatGPT Classic", feels much faster and is using around 478 MB under the same conditions.
I have a reasonably powerful PC, so the difference is pretty noticeable. I assume Classic will eventually be discontinued, but so far the transition to the new app on Windows hasn't been particularly good for me.
- WalterGR
From yesterday, with 26 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49264334
- pdhborges
For someone who has not tried these desktop apps: what is the the advantage versus cli codex with some MPCs and multiple folders each one with their context files?
- BodyCulture
This will make it much easier to trap people into installing it without any isolation just to their primary user account or even make it run with admin privileges by default.
With the recent security related events we already see that it seems to be wide spread practice that many operators avoid the hassle of isolating their agents.
It is just an incredible cultural experience to see how quick stupidity gets accepted as a behavioural default.
- lucideer
The most remarkable things about this announcement:
- Electron based app: Electron is a framework sold on the basis of enabling rapid cross-platform development at the cost of performance.
- Frontier AI company: AI is sold on the basis of enabling rapid development
- App was released in February & took 6 entire months to port to Linux
- torh
FYI; This link shows Codex based on your current OS. I get a norwegian landing page with a download link for Windows.
- miguel-muniz
Unrelated to this Linux release but I've been using the new ChatGPT desktop app since I annoying updated on accident, and I haven't had that great of an experience.
I previously really enjoyed the Codex app. It was easy for me to understand and find what I needed. The conversation view provided the right amount of information without feeling too concise or full of jargon and the typographic hierarchy made it easy to skim. The project based workflow made sense for my needs.
Ever since they combined all ChatGPT into one app though it has become a mess. It's trying to do too much in one. The settings menu is especially bloated, and I find the UI to be too complicated for the simple questions I'm asking outside of development work. I would rather just use the web interface for general use at this point. They've also been updating much of the UI to follow the same patterns as Claude, and I've not been impressed with the Claude desktop app.
To me, they are taking multiple steps backwards. I hope they eventually find their way again.
- 23qsGa1
The testimonials at the bottom are all from AI companies.
Linux users are kind of averse to trojans. You should call it Back Orifice For Linux. You don't even have to change the OpenAI logo!
- Kinrany
I wonder why operating systems aren't integrating with browsers more.
- cloudie78
Reminder to everyone, treat these as trojans. Run them isolated from the rest of your system.
Give it a full desktop in a VM if you want to, just not direct access to your system.