First off — confession time. This website is NOT actually about
farming llamas. Sorry to disappoint anyone hoping for tips on shearing wool or
building a spit-proof fence. 🙃
Here’s the gist: “Llama” in these pages is an allegory — we’re using
llamas as cute stand-ins for tech stuff. What it really means is:
LArge LAnguage Model Artificial-intelligence (LLM-AI).
That name came from Meta’s early LLM series, dubbed LLaMA. The name
stuck around because llamas are adorable. 🪄 So rather than drab phrases like
"install your quantized model file into your runtime environment", we say
"feed hay to your llama so it doesn’t starve."
💡 Did you know? Real llamas will happily chew on your clothes if
unsupervised. Digital llamas? They munch data. But please — never feed either your router.
That’s the trick: metaphors make things easier to swallow. If you can picture a llama
munching hay in a barn, you can picture a model file loading into your computer. 🏡🌾🖥️
Ready to begin your journey into llama husbandry (sort of)? Let’s roll. 🦙✨
🦙🌿🦙
⚠️ Warning: We’re Starting Absurdly Basic
Step 0
Before we boot, compile, quantize, or whisper sweet nothings to GPUs, we begin with a
truly advanced concept: the chair. And its natural predator: the desk.
Yes, you already know this. That’s the point. We’re showing how basic we’re willing
to go so nobody hears “PCIe slot” and pictures an alpaca piñata.
1 desk — stable, non-wobbly, not also your dining table (ideally).
1 chair — your spine will write us a thank-you note.
Power strip — surge protection = fewer dramatic sparks, more gentle humming.
Bright light — so screws don’t flee to a parallel dimension under the couch.
Notebook + pen — for sketches, IPs, MACs, and rare llama sightings.
Once the throne and altar are in place, we proceed to actual barn-building: case,
motherboard, power, and all the delicious silicon hay. But first—sit. Breathe.
Touch grass (optional). Then touch desk (mandatory).
🗺️ The Two Stacks: Hardware & Software
Map
Quick heads-up before we gallop in: we’ll build two stacks.
First the hardware stack (the barn, fences, and hay racks),
then the software stack (the feed schedule, training whistles,
and fancy llama vocabulary).
Think of it like this:
Hardware is what real llamas can chew—but please don’t let them. Software is what our llamas will chew—and we absolutely want them to.
IMAGE HERE — CUTE STACK DIAGRAM
Hardware Stack (the physical barn)
Desk + chair (Step 0 throne + altar)
Case (the barn walls)
Motherboard (barn floor & lanes)
CPU & Cooler (farm brain + breeze)
GPU (llama muscle for AI hay-baling)
RAM (short-term hay shelf)
Storage: SSD/NVMe (long-term hay loft)
PSU (power well + safe buckets)
Cables & airflow (don’t tangle the herd)
Software Stack (the training kit)
OS install (Ubuntu/Windows—pick a pasture)
Drivers & updates (teach the barn doors to open)
Package manager (apt/choco—your feed wagon)
Ollama / WebUI (the cozy barn for models)
Models (the actual llamas: Mistral, Llama-3, Gemma)
Tooling (editors, terminals, CUDA, ROCm)
Backups (spare hay bales off-site)
Security (locks on the barn, not optional)
Up next, we build the barn from the ground up. No rush. No chaos. Plenty of hay.
When you’re ready, we’ll start with the case and motherboard lanes.
🦙 The Barn Walls (aka: Your PC Case)
Picture a tiny llama sanctuary. The case is the barn—it keeps rain out,
dust bunnies away, and gives our herd proper doors and airflow lanes. Real llamas might
chew on barn wood (bad idea 🫠). Our software llamas will chew on
compute instead (excellent idea ✨). First we build sturdy walls; later we fill them with hay
(CPU, GPU, RAM) and teach the herd to hum.
