How to run an LLM on your laptop

Running large language models locally on personal computers has become accessible to anyone with a laptop, offering privacy benefits and independence from major AI companies. Tools like Ollama and LM Studio make it easy to download and run open-weight models, with the general rule that each billion parameters requires about 1GB of RAM. While local models are less powerful than online alternatives like ChatGPT, they provide consistent behavior, privacy protection, and help users understand AI limitations through more obvious hallucinations.