How to Run a Chatbot on Your Own Computer

Local large language models run on Windows, macOS, or Linux and operate offline without subscription fees. They need at least 8 GB RAM (16 GB recommended, 32 GB for large models) and a GPU with over 8 GB VRAM for optimal performance. Free interfaces such as LM Studio Bionic, vLLM, Llama.cpp, Ollama, and GPT-4All load models downloadable from repositories like Hugging Face, which hosts more than three million options. The article details a step-by-step Windows installation of LM Studio Bionic, including project creation and local model selection.