not just AI, i use an operating system called nixos which gives you somewhat unprecedented levels of control over building your operating system. or it makes that level of control far more accessible than it had been before (when you would rely on your distro package maintainers exclusively to build your software). i think nixos will only get more widespread in industry, semi usurping docker (in some of its roles) in some environments. probably there are other examples (maybe yubikey/password managers somewhat?).

i had never recompiled my kernel myself for example before using it.