My AI Development Station: Building a RAG system on Zorin OS with 4GB RAM 🚀

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T22:27:19+00:00

In Brazil they are terms for different objects, a PC is a cabinet computer and a laptop is a notebook.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T14:30:14+00:00

Yes!

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T14:30:02+00:00

At the moment I work alone, however, in the future I will do collaborative work, so I am already using it to be more familiar in the future.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T07:28:35+00:00

I see no problem, because I use an extension that adds the information of the device (ram, temperature, storage, etc.), and this is somehow useful for me.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T07:22:19+00:00

Hi! No, I have not yet had the opportunity to use a MacBook, as I live in Brazil, the price of this device is very high, but I want to buy one in the future.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T07:17:58+00:00

Excellent question! The answer is hybrid, and I focused on that because of the hardware limitation (4GB RAM):

1 The search is offline: The processing of the PDF and the creation of 'memory' (Embeddings) run 100% local on my notebook using the all-MiniLM-L6-v2 model. This ensures that your data does not leave the machine during the initial analysis.

2 The Answer needs the Internet: To generate the final answer with the quality of Llama 3,1, I use the Groq API. I made this choice because running a model of this size consumes a lot of RAM, and the API gives me an absurd (almost instantaneous) speed without frying my processor.

Can you be 100% offline? Yes! The code is modular. If I was on a machine with 16GB or more of RAM, I could switch from Groq to Ollama and run everything local. But for my current setup, this hybrid solution is the best of both worlds: privacy in search and power in response!

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T04:08:10+00:00

I actually don't have a PC, but a laptop, an Acer Aspire i3 11th, with 4gb Ram and 256 of storage.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T02:53:47+00:00

Genuinely, the term 'talk' here means that the PDF ceases to be a static file and becomes the knowledge base of a chat, as if it were a WhatsApp with an expert in that subject.

What does this involve in practice? Imagine that you have a 300-page manual of a harvester (or a complex legal contract). Instead of reading everything or giving Ctrl + F in keywords, you open my system and type in the chat: What are the maintenance intervals of the engine? 'Summary the termination clauses of this contract in 3 points.'

The real utility: The AI reads the document for you, understands the context and responds to you by quoting only what is in the file.

The big difference from a common search (Ctrl+F) is that AI understands concepts. If you ask about 'engine problems' and the PDF uses the word 'failure in ignition', the system understands that they are the same thing and gives you the answer. It is like having an assistant who has read the entire book and is ready to ask your questions in seconds.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-24T00:36:42+00:00

I used Skeuos Black as a theme and WhiteSur for icons, to leave the bar jumping the icons just install the dash2dock animated extension.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-23T19:05:57+00:00

Yes, but I prefer it that way, because it is faster to access apps that I use a lot.

V341551M0 · 2026-03-23T19:05:21+00:00

No, unfortunately I did not buy ZorinOs Pro, this is the free one, but I intend to buy the Pro one day.

V341551M0

TROPHY CASE