I stopped using Qwen and Gemma after finding a local LLM that actually thinks before answering
… Sign in to your XDA account Most local setups run fine on two or three solid generalists splitting the work between them. …
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Local one-shots, you say? Yep, we're there with Qwen 3.8 27B
What 'distilling' an AI model actually means and why it matters to self-hosting open LLMs
… Distillation improves how much capability developers can fit into that limited parameter budget. Companies such as Meta, Google, Alibaba, and DeepSeek have enough resources to continue training models without distillation. …
I ran Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.5 for the same local tasks, and one pulled miles ahead
… Sign in to your XDA account Local LLMs are one of those things that started off as a novelty and ended up being more useful than I expected . …
I ran Gemma, Llama, and Qwen on my phone, and only one of them is worth the storage
… It's Alibaba's small dense model that's strong on reasoning and also has vision. …
I split my coding work between Claude, Qwen3-Coder and Gemma 4, and it costs less than paying for one subscription
… Sign in to your XDA account Large language models LLMs are dime-a-dozen these days. …
I tested a local LLM against a frontier cloud model, and the gap was smaller than I expected
… In my spare time, you’ll probably find me playing Counter-Strike or VALORANT, and you can reach out to me at adam@xda-developers.com , on Twitter as @AdamConwayIE , on Instagram as AdamConwayIE , or u/AdamConwayIE on Reddit. …
I vibe coded with Qwen 3.6 on a platform it had never seen, and the model was never the bottleneck
… In my spare time, you’ll probably find me playing Counter-Strike or VALORANT, and you can reach out to me at adam@xda-developers.com , on Twitter as @AdamConwayIE , on Instagram as AdamConwayIE , or u/AdamConwayIE on Reddit. …
I trimmed down my local AI stack, and I should have done it sooner
… Sign in to your XDA account If you spend enough time exploring self-hosted AI , it's easy to believe that more tools mean a better setup. …
I run a 24GB GPU instead of paying for Claude or Codex, and Qwen 3.6 keeps up more than I expected
… In that time, he's also written for SlashGear and numerous corporate clients before finding his home at XDA in the spring of 2023. …
I stopped running the biggest local LLM that could fit, and a 2B model handles 90% of what I need
… Qwen 3.5 2B came out a few weeks earlier in March 2026 from Alibaba's Qwen team, as part of the small series alongside the 0.8B, 4B, and 9B. …