I will give it a try, I like the idea of being closer to the metal.

A Proper self-contained, self improving AI@home with the AI as the OS is my end goal, I have a nice high spec but older laptop I am currently using as a sacrificial pawn experimenting with this, but there is a big gap in my knowledge and I'm still working through GPT2 level stuff, also resources are tight when you're retired. I guess someone will get there this year the way things are going, but I'm happy to have fun until then.