See the release notes: we now have experimental support for using any prefix shorter than the Linux default. We are aiming to eventually fully support (Tier 1) any prefix under 64 bytes long.
I’d imagine they’re live updating the library paths in the binary headers, so anything shorter or equal to what they’re using is a simple rewrite, but longer is more complex.
The present is built mostly on layers of the long-past :)
It makes me think of when Arch merged /usr/bin and sbin with /bin and sbin. Having them split made sense in a ton of scenarios that used to be very common, but increasingly the split was vestigial for most users.
Yea, my understanding is that the split between / and /usr used to be more or less: the drive they used for / ran out of space, so they mounted another drive as /usr. As a consequence, / became where you put stuff that was essential during early boot, while /usr was where you put everything else.
But these days, "early boot" is handled by initramfs and we've all got drives large enough to not need the split anyway.
The dedicated user isn't really required; it just expects that /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew exists. That can just be a symlink to your home directory. But yes, creating that symlink requires root on most systems. Brew itself doesn't require root or that pathname; you can put packages anywhere, but then many will have to be built from scratch since the pre-built packages don't work. And you need bubblewrap installed (which requires root) to use the sandbox, but again that is optional.
All that said, when you are running without a sandbox installing to a nonstandard location, not everything works consistently. I run this mode all the time. But it has been getting better.
The Pro has a nice backlight that is useful when reading at night. The only downside is the lack of a USB-C port, so you have to use their magnetic dongle to charge. Also, if you want one, I recommend buying from the official site to avoid getting one with the firmware locked (there may be a way to unlock it, but I'm not sure). Lastly, look at the competition: I'm happy with my X4 Pro, but there are a couple of others with different feature sets that are still compatible with Crosspoint and may be of interest if you want to use it for more than just reading.
Justs a heads up, people are comparing with the X4 and not the X4 classic. The classic is a brand new one released today, and it replaces the X4 on the official store.
It doesn't have a USB connector either, so it's all pogo connectors now
How a patchwork of Python modules constitutes an API(?) or whatever(?) and how to use it (does anyone?), is beyond me. There is nothing that I would call documentation, let alone concrete usage examples. I know more amusing ways to waste my time. When I want to play with models, I use llama.cpp.
You don't really need a maintainer when codex or claude code can set it up for you; thats how I got Trellis2 working on windows and tiny VRAM despite Microsoft recommending you have 24GB VRAM and Linux. Models are pretty disposable now.
So, instead of having one or two maintained projects that work super well, now we have hundreds or thousands of people half-assing it locally each time they need it? Doesn't sound efficient.
It might make sense to do this if there literally isn't an existing solution out there, but I think most would find that it's better to use an existing solution than to recreate the wheel every time there's a need. It's just less effort/time/money.
you're right, but flipped on its' head it also means that a well-meaning FOSS project may not ship out a zero-day in the future that affects half the planet at once.
now we'll just always be vulnerable from different angles in different and unique ways across the globe.
better? well, no.. but it is different, and biology has offered tons of wisdom about why it's a good thing to achieve things different ways across the world, maybe some far-future version of this weird fragmentation of work that is happening now will contribute to some kind of herd effect that reduces the severity or magnitude of some bug or work of malice.
who knows though, i'm probably just considering it too positively. The disintegration of consolidated effort is a pita, I agree.
There has to be a middle ground between a monoculture and not sharing a single knowledge bit between every human. Because if everyone is making their half assed thing just for themselves using LLM without sharing anything, that also means FOSS will stop existing, and knowledge will only evolve inside the corporations that have money for creating their provate knowledge bases.
It's minimal kind of speed but for the price I feel it's quite good. Smaller models fly as you'd expect, but the fact it can load these mid range models into something that is dirt cheap is generally a win imho.
That really put me off.
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