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Jan Desktop
Install 👋 Jan
Linux

Linux Installation

Instructions for installing Jan on Linux.

Install Jan

Download

Install

Installation commands:

dpkg

sudo dpkg -i jan-linux-amd64-{version}.deb

apt-get

sudo apt-get install ./jan-linux-amd64-{version}.deb

Compatibility

  • OS: Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/RHEL, Arch, openSUSE
  • CPU: AVX2 required — Intel Haswell (2013+), AMD Excavator (2015+)
  • Memory: 8GB minimum (16GB recommended)
  • GPU: 6GB VRAM minimum
  • Storage: 10GB free space minimum

Jan Data Folder

Jan stores all your data locally — downloaded models, conversation threads, settings, and logs generated from using the app. Nothing is sent to the cloud.

Default location:


~/.config/Jan/data

See Jan Data Folder for details.

GPU Acceleration

Configuration for GPU support:

Step 1: Verify Hardware & Install Dependencies

1.1. Check GPU Detection


lspci | grep -i nvidia

1.2. Install Required components

NVIDIA Driver:

  1. Install the NVIDIA Driver (opens in a new tab), ideally via your package manager.
  2. Verify:

nvidia-smi

CUDA Toolkit:

  1. Install the CUDA toolkit (opens in a new tab), ideally from your package manager (11.7+)
  2. Verify:

nvcc --version

Additional Requirements:


sudo apt update
sudo apt install gcc-11 g++-11 cpp-11
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/cuda/lib64

Documentation (opens in a new tab)

Step 2: Enable GPU Acceleration

  1. Navigate to Settings () > Local Engine > Llama.cpp
  2. Select appropriate backend in llama-cpp Backend. Details in our llama.cpp guide.

CUDA offers better performance than Vulkan.

Uninstall Jan

Removal commands:


sudo apt-get remove jan
rm -rf Jan
rm -rf ~/.config/Jan/data
rm -rf ~/.config/Jan/cache

⚠️

These commands permanently delete application data.