Installing Ollama on Linux

Ollama is the fastest way to run large language models locally. This guide walks you through installation on Linux, pulling your first model, and verifying everything works.

Prerequisites

• A Linux system (Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 38+, or similar)
• At least 8 GB of RAM (16 GB recommended)
• curl installed

Step 1 — Install Ollama

Run the official install script:

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

This downloads the Ollama binary, installs it to /usr/local/bin, and creates a systemd service.

Step 2 — Start the service

The installer usually starts the service automatically. Verify with:

systemctl status ollama

If it's not running:

sudo systemctl enable --now ollama

Step 3 — Pull a model

Download a small model to test with:

ollama pull llama3.2:3b

This downloads the 3-billion-parameter Llama 3.2 model (~2 GB).

Step 4 — Run a prompt

ollama run llama3.2:3b "Explain what a large language model is in two sentences."

You should see a response within a few seconds.

Step 5 — Verify the API

Ollama exposes a local API on port 11434:

curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags

This returns a JSON list of installed models.

Next steps

• Try a larger model: ollama pull llama3.1:8b
• Explore the model library
• Connect a UI like Open WebUI