Setting up and using DeepSeek on your local computer.
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that has recently gained some attention for developing advanced AI models that rival those of leading companies like OpenAI and Google in a number of benchmarks as illustrated below.
DeepSeek has also open-sourced DeepSeek-R1-Zero, DeepSeek-R1, and six dense models distilled from DeepSeek-R1 based on Llama and Qwen. An easier way of setting up DeepSeek on your local computer is using Open WebUI and Ollama
Step One
Go to Ollama and select the correct build depending on your operating system. In our case we selected Linux and installed. You might need to install curl just in case you did not have it set up already.
Run the following commmand on your Terminal:
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
Alternatively, if you have brew set up. Run the following command on your Terminal window:
brew install ollama
Step Two
Go to Ollama models and select model that would work for you. In our case we selected the deepseek-r1:1.5b but feel free to pick any of the models depending on the kind of computer you will be using.
Go to the Terminal window and type ollama run deepseek-r1:1.5b
On Windows
Open Windows PowerShell and run the same command ollama run deepseek-r1:1.5b
On Mac
Open Terminal and run the same command ollama run deepseek-r1:1.5b
DeepSeek installed, without browser interface
At this point you can start prompting DeepSeek on the Terminal. If you prefer to use a browser window instead, please proceed to Step Three below.
Step Three
We will need to set up the web user interface using Open WebUI. To do so, ensure you have Docker set up and running. Type the following command on your terminal window.
docker run -d --network=host -v open-webui:/app/backend/data -e OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:11434 --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
YouTube Video
Also find the YouTube video below that demonstrates what has been explained above..
Conclusion
It is our hope the above guidelines were helpful to your DeepSeek journey. Don’t hesitate to send us a Chat or shoot us an email in any case you might be having queries. Additionally, we’d love to hear your feedback. Please take a moment to leave us a review on Google—it really helps us grow!
Symatech Labs is a Software Development company based in Nairobi, Kenya that specializes in Software Development, Mobile App Development, Web Application Development, Integrations, USSD and Consultancy.