In this AI tutorial post we are going to detail how to install and perform the first steps with LMStudio, which is an open source desktop application similar to Ollama that we detail in chapter 1.1 of this tutorial, and which allows, like Ollama, to download, run and manage large open source language models (LLMs) directly on your own computer, without depending on cloud servers or internet connections, and with a graphical interface unlike Ollama.
Access lmstudio.ai with a web browser or through curl, and download the installer to the OS and install it.
In my case I am installing it on Ubuntu 25 and I have downloaded a file with the name LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage.
This file should be in the 'Downloads' folder on the user's home page with the session from which we downloaded it with the web browser or with curl:
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~$ pwd
/home/operatorfeitam
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~$ cd Downloads
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/Downloads$ ls -la
total 1026708
drwxr-xr-x 2 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 14:40 .
drwxr-x--- 22 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 14:38 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 1051334741 Jan 19 14:40 LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/Downloads$
And from a command console we execute the following to install it:
./LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
But we do not want to run it from the 'Downloads' folder, so we create the 'tools' folder within the user's home, and within this folder a subfolder called 'appimages' (it can be in any other folder, but in this tutorial we will have LMStudio available in this folder) which is where we will move the file LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage:
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~$ pwd
/home/operatorfeitam
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~$ mkdir -p tools/appimages
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~$ cd tools
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools$ cd appimages
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ pwd
/home/operatorfeitam/tools/appimages
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ ls -la
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 2 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:13 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:13 ..
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ mv $HOME/Downloads/LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage $HOME/tools/appimages/LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ ls -la
total 1026708
drwxrwxr-x 2 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:18 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:13 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 1051334741 Jan 19 14:40 LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$
Before proceeding to execute it, you must give execution permissions to the file with the AppImage extension, for example with:
chmod +x LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
Where we see the change of file permissions:
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ ls -la
total 1026708
drwxrwxr-x 2 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:18 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:13 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 1051334741 Jan 19 14:40 LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ chmod +x LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$ ls -la
total 1026708
drwxrwxr-x 2 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:18 .
drwxrwxr-x 3 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 4096 Jan 19 16:13 ..
-rwxrwxr-x 1 operatorfeitam operatorfeitam 1051334741 Jan 19 14:40 LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage
operatorfeitam@ubuntudesktop-tutorialia:~/tools/appimages$
Then run "./LM-Studio-0.3.39-2-x64.AppImage --no-sandbox" which will raise a window of the LMStudio program:
We click on "Skip" and it shows us the following:
Where we see a GUI where we can chat and select conversation lists. But for now we cannot do anything until we load a model to use, for which we will click on "Select a model to load (Ctrl + L)" and a modal window will open where we have the option to download the "qwen-3b" model " to download it and be able to use it, where we will press the "Download" button:
We wait for the model to download, and we select the model and close the modal window on the "X" icon. Once with the selected model we can start a conversion with it, such as "Explain to me the concept of the Napierian logarithm" in the text box where it says "Send a message to the model...":
We see in the image above that we asked him the question appearing in the chat content block on the right, and he is already answering, and still thinking as he reports. This conversation for now is called "Unnamed Chat", but in the three dots icon (...) you can change the name to recover it at any time and go deeper.
If we press the folder icon on the left we see the view of the models that we have available locally:
In the searched element we can write the model that we want to download, such as "LLama3" which we do not yet have, where it informs us that "No matching results" because we do not have it, but it shows you a "Search more results for Llama3" button where we can download it and install it for LM Studio:
Pressing the "Search more result for Llama3" button gives you the results, in a new modal window, where we can select the one we want to download and install it in the "Download" button:
Once you have downloaded it available in LM Studio, you can use it by selecting it in the top selector of the conversations view.
We see that LM Studio with its simple graphical interface will allow us to use multiple models locally in a simple way just as we do with Ollama from the command console.
