I began derailing another thread conversing with Aravisian about AI, and given that I have a question about a problem I've run into several times anyway, why not start a thread for more general conversation?
There are numerous ethical and societal questions, surrounding AI's use; they're hard to escape online right now. This thread is not for that. All else aside, if you use AI for anything fun, what's your game?
I use AI strictly locally these days, stuff I can run on Zorin. Mainly I poke at LLMs seeing just how well they handle weird prompts (usually terribly, but sometimes amusingly), and generate images with Automatic1111 or Forge and a wide variety of StableDiffusion/XL or Flux.1 models, mostly just for images to amuse myself, rarely for wallpapers, sometimes for art I'll only use temporarily (a character in a tabletop RPG for example), or less frequently, to convey an image in my head with some precision—such as if I mean to actually PAY an artist, but don't have reference images.
(Stuff below is all clean, but hidden to reduce vertical scroll.)
Pathfinder character
Character from a Pathfinder tabletop game. Strix ancestry, her feathered cloak is her actual wings—disguising that way requires a feat, but she was all about lies. Made with NovelAI before I switched to AI tools I can run locally on Zorin.
Bagpipe
Bagpipe from a mobile game called Arknights, which I also play on Zorin, via Genymotion. A farmer/soldier (...the forum dislikes a certain Latin loanword), she mentions potatoes in a dialogue line and the player base kind of attached that to her. The model is specifically designed to make something look like a PVC figure.
Tools I use:
Forge, a fork of Automatic1111 with more features and model support. Setup is as simplest from the terminal, but needs Python 3.10 and git, both easily installed with APT.
Setup
- Navigate to where you want to install.
git clone https://github.com/lllyasviel/stable-diffusion-webui-forge.git
- Navigate to the cloned directory, should be
stable-diffusion-webui-forge
Python3.10 -m venv venv
./webui.sh
That'll install pre-requisites in the venv (virtual environment, to keep from polluting your actual Python installation with pip based installs) and start a browser window. Setting up models and using it is a bit involved; this is how I started—just skip the Windows install section. Officially, Forge is experimental and the author recommends using Automatic1111, but Automatic1111 doesn't support as many model types, tends to be slower, etc.
Automatic1111, the simplest "at home" tool for running Stable Diffusion based models. Supports Stable Diffusion 1, 1.5, SDXL, and I think Stable Diffusion 2, but hardly anyone adopted 2. Like Forge, it needs Python and is pulled with git. Installation will pull Stable Diffusion 1.5 automatically so you have something to work with, but at it's base, that's not great.
Setup
Exactly the same as Forge above, but clone https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui.git
instead. As noted, Automatic1111 supports fewer model types and is generally pretty slow to adopt new features these days, but the Forge developer recommends it for stability.
I've had Comfy UI working on Zorin too, but I never really figured it out well and can't find good Linux setup instructions. It's the most powerful and not nearly as comfy as the name suggests, in my limited experience.
Finding more models isn't hard. Civitai.com has tons, mature hidden by default, with options in user profiles to hide anime, furry, gore, and political content, whether it's mature or not.
LMStudio, an all in one for both playing with and developing for LLMs. Its Linux version is an AppImage, just download and run. It has a built in model search that'll let you hunt for and download models from Huggingface without visiting the site, and will let you know which models you're likely able to offload to a GPU, partially or fully.
Finally, my problem: If you've ever used Automatic1111 or Forge, have you been able to install Nvidia's TensorRT extension? It always goes into an infinite "working" animation, but I'm not aware of any reason it shouldn't work on Linux. It also breaks the venv and I have to repair the installation or reinstall.