Running local LLMs offline on a ten-hour flight • Hacker News Board

vladgur wrote: post #6

That window seat with the 14” laptop seems extremely claustrophobic. That’s the real limitation on an economy flight - space rather than power or the internet… at least it would be for me. The only times I was able to get my laptop out and do some productive work was when I either was sitting in premium economy isle seat with room to spare or when there was an empty seat next to me

I got some Xreal glasses and it's made flights so much more enjoyable. I can watch movies or work on something lying back, and the "screen" looks massive.

Re: Running local LLMs offline on a ten-hour flight

#37

Post by walrus01 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

As much as it's a fun gimmick to run a relatively good sized LLM like qwen 3.6 35B locally, I would much rather have the ability to run it remotely on a piece of hardware I control via VPN session. Much better on battery life and heat. If I'm on an airplane I care about having as much battery life as possible.

Let's say you have a basic setup like llama.cpp and llama-server on a remote server (even if it's just sitting under your home office desk) running a 35GB Q8 quantized model of qwen 3.6 35B, it's not difficult to make llama-server available to your laptop over just about any form of internet connection and VPN.

Having the ability to run that same model locally if you really need to because no internet connection whatsoever is available, but the times that you simultaneously have no internet and a serious need for something the model can output are fairly rare these days.

Re: Running local LLMs offline on a ten-hour flight

#38

Post by JSR_FDED » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #36

vladgur wrote: post #6

That window seat with the 14” laptop seems extremely claustrophobic. That’s the real limitation on an economy flight - space rather than power or the internet… at least it would be for me. The only times I was able to get my laptop out and do some productive work was when I either was sitting in premium economy isle seat with room to spare or when there was an empty seat next to me

I got some Xreal glasses and it's made flights so much more enjoyable. I can watch movies or work on something lying back, and the "screen" looks massive.

I’ve been so tempted but some of the reviews say it’s not good for reading code. What’s been your experience? What is the effective resolution of the screen you get? Is it sharp enough for coding?

Re: Running local LLMs offline on a ten-hour flight

#39

Post by koolba » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #31

bobro wrote: post #11

Can’t you guys just read a book and take a nap?

I'm jealous of people who can actually get comfortable enough to sleep on flights.

With enough drinks and a long enough flight, it’s unavoidable.

Re: Running local LLMs offline on a ten-hour flight

#40

Post by stavros » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

JSR_FDED wrote: post #38

stavros wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got some Xreal glasses and it's made flights so much more enjoyable. I can watch movies or work on something lying back, and the "screen" looks massive.

I’ve been so tempted but some of the reviews say it’s not good for reading code. What’s been your experience? What is the effective resolution of the screen you get? Is it sharp enough for coding?

It's a definite "it depends". The resolution is fine, but I think it's more about the specific pair of glasses you get? I got the same model three times (long story), and the first two were fine, the third has some blurring in the middle of the right eye.

It's also uncomfortable to look at the very bottom of the screen (which is where all the chat text boxes are), so I usually resize all my windows to be a bit smaller. With that, it's very good (and you can always just increase the font size).

I would like glasses with smaller fov, so I didn't have to look around so much, but that's probably just me, since everyone else likes them larger.