It took me just as long to setup llama.cpp as it did to get other tools working well (ollama or other frontend that abstract away the actual config)

It’s always read HOWTO, attempt to recreate state, so I prefer sticking with low level where I also learn a bit more about the internals

C/C++ user friendliness has come as far as all the other languages and the ecosystems. Really the only reason to “fear” it is propagated memes to do so. It’s not a gun.

So I’d suggest just compile llama.cpp and install huggingface-cli to download GGUF format models, which is all ollama is doing but with even more dependencies and much more opaque outcome