From assignments to casual “what is the capital of Bangladesh?” moments, whether you’re a school kid or a seasoned CEO, AI agents have quietly crept into our lives and become the go-to source for answers. You’re probably using ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini every day. Cool tools, right? But here’s the thing: every chat you have is sent away to massive server farms owned by large corporations. As if they don’t already know enough about us. The issue? Our chat habits are often deeply personal, and sometimes we’d like to keep them that way.

What if you could run something just as smart, but entirely on your own hardware: be it your PC, a Raspberry Pi, or even an old laptop gathering dust? That’s exactly what Ollama makes possible.

What is Ollama?

Think of it like your personal JARVIS. It downloads the models, runs them locally, and talks to you.

Nothing leaves your device.

Why even bother?

• Privacy – No more “trust me bro” moments.
• Offline AI – In a Remote village? No Internet? No problem.
• Cost Control – Forget about API tokens and limits running out mid-month.
• Full Control – Fine-tune the brain to do exactly what you want.

If that sounds good, here’s a quick guide to get you started with Ollama. Even if the privacy angle doesn’t concern you, try it for the sheer satisfaction of pulling this off and to understand just how much AI power you can have within arm’s reach.

While Ollama can run on Mac, Linux or Windows, since we are going to be downloading LLMs and loading up the LLM to your local, having a large RAM helps. So, here’s what will be good to have:

• Hardware: At least 8GB RAM for smaller models (e.g., 7B parameters); 16GB+ recommended for larger models.
• A GPU (NVIDIA/AMD) is optional but improves performance.
• Disk Space: Models range from 1-50GB, depending on size.

Installation and Setup

Download Ollama

• Visit the official Ollama website
• Click the “Download” button for your operating system (macOS, Linux, or Windows).
• For macOS/Windows, download the installer. For Linux, use the provided script:

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

Installation

• macOS/Windows: Run the downloaded installer and follow the on-screen instructions.
• Linux: The script above installs Ollama automatically. If you need a specific version, set the OLLAMA_VERSION environment variable (e.g., OLLAMA_VERSION=0.1.15).
• Verify installation by opening a terminal and running: ollama
  This displays available commands (e.g., serve, run, list).

Download an LLM

• Explore Available Models:
  • Visit the Ollama model library to view the list of available LLM models to choose from.
  • Popular models include:
    • llama3.2 (small, general-purpose, ~2GB).
    • gpt-oss (latest open-source models from OpenAI)
    • mistral (good for text generation, ~4GB).
    • phi3 (lightweight, ~2.2GB, good for low-spec machines).
    • llava (multimodal, supports text + images).
• Pull a Model:
  • To download a model without running it, use the pull command. For example:ollama pull llama3.2
  • This downloads the model to your local storage (e.g., ~/.ollama/models on macOS/Linux or C:\Users\<YourUsername>\.ollama\models on Windows).

Run a Model

• Use the run command to download (if not already pulled) and interact with the model:

ollama run llama3.2

• This starts an interactive REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) where you can type prompts and get responses. For example:

>>> What is the capital of Bangladesh?
The capital of Bangladesh is Dhaka.
>>> /bye

Cool Projects to Work with Ollama

Once you’ve got Ollama running, the real fun begins. Here are a few ideas to spark your creativity:

• Personal Knowledge Base
  Feed Ollama your notes, PDFs, or even scanned docs so it becomes your private Wikipedia. Perfect for students, researchers, or writers.
• Offline Coding Assistant
  Run a code-focused model like codellama locally to debug, generate snippets, or even learn a new language—without sending your code to third parties.
• Smart Home Controller
  Combine Ollama with a Raspberry Pi and Home Assistant to create a natural-language hub for lights, fans, sensors, or security alerts.
• Private Mental Health Companion
  Build a lightweight therapy or journaling bot that lives entirely on your machine—no cloud, no leaks, just private conversations.
• Travel Buddy
  Load offline map data and have your own AI-powered travel guide that works even when you’re out of range.
• Local Content Summarizer
  Drop in research papers, blog posts, or meeting transcripts and let Ollama create condensed summaries without sending anything online.
• Retro Laptop Revival
  Got an old laptop lying around? Turn it into a dedicated AI assistant terminal. Great for recycling and tinkering.

If you’re ready to start building, Ollama’s official documentation and Reddit community are a goldmine for setup, model options, and integrations.

Wrapping Up…

Tools like Ollama put serious AI power right into your hands, no big tech middleman required. Whether you care about privacy, love tinkering with new tech, or just want the bragging rights of running your own AI, this is your chance.

Start small, break things, fix them, and share what you build. Who knows, your weekend project could be the next big breakthrough. Because with the tools available today, the only limit is how creative you’re willing to get.

Built something cool? Tag us on LinkedIn, we’d love to see what you’ve made!