AI (especially LLMs) are taking over the world right now. The pace of progress has been especially dizzying this year, with every month producing a new breakthrough in the technology (e.g Opus 4.6, OpenClaw). As with all technologies, it is also important to have a grasp of the basics. And what better way to learn the basics than trying to run an LLM in your computer!
We are all familiar with the popular AI tools (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude. These services are running on what is called frontier models, which are the best models that is available in the market right now. But these models are usually paid, either per token or through a usage quota. If you want have a “free” LLM, then you have to run your own model using your machine. For this, we need to use open source (or more accurately open weight) models. Fortunately, we have a wide selection of models: