Ollama – v0.17.0-rc2
Ollama v0.17.0‑rc2 just dropped – here’s the quick rundown for your local LLM playground:
What Ollama does
A cross‑platform framework that lets you spin up open‑source models (Llama 3, Gemma, Mistral, etc.) locally via a simple CLI and REST API. Perfect for tinkering without cloud lock‑in.
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What’s new in v0.17.0‑rc2
- Web‑search plugin auto‑install
- The `cmd/config` step now silently drops the web‑search extension into your user extensions folder, giving you instant internet‑augmented generation—no manual copy‑paste needed.
- Dependency & build tweaks
- Updated Go modules for smoother runs on macOS 13+ and Linux glibc 2.35+.
- Compile‑time optimizations shave ~5 % off cold‑start latency.
- Improved error handling
- Clearer messages when a model fails to load (e.g., missing GGUF metadata).
- Graceful fallback to the previous stable version if a plugin crashes during init.
- Platform polish
- Fixed ARM64 Windows crash on first run.
- Added missing `README.md` links for the new web‑search plugin in release assets.
- Docs bump
- New “Getting Started with Plugins” guide and refreshed CLI flag table.
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🚀 TL;DR: automatic web‑search plugin install, snappier startup on newer OSes, clearer errors, and a handful of stability fixes. Happy experimenting!