I Found An Open-source Notebooklm Alternative That's Powerful, Private - And Free

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Open Notebook is an open-source return connected NotebookLM.
• Open Notebook tin beryllium installed and utilized for free.
• You do person to understand Linux and containers to deploy it.

NotebookLM has go an incredibly celebrated instrumentality for research, organizing, interacting pinch documents, generating summaries, creating flashcards, and producing tailored reports. With NotebookLM, you tin adhd your ain sources and past usage AI to make informative connections betwixt those sources, which leads to an moreover amended knowing of nan material. NotebookLM only useful connected uploaded material, truthful you power nan sources.

Also: How to usage Claude (and really it's different from ChatGPT)

The biggest rumor pinch NotebookLM is that it's a cloud-based service, truthful you cannot tally it locally. Although you tin nexus NotebookLM to locally-installed AI (such arsenic Ollama), that combination's usage is constricted to definite functions.

If you want to limit NotebookLM to only usage locally-installed AI, you'd beryllium retired of luck.

What do you do if you spot a precocious worth connected privacy, but still request to usage a instrumentality for illustration NotebookLM wrong your location network?

Fortunately, there's an open-source replacement that tin beryllium deployed that is conscionable arsenic powerful and tin usage your AI of choice… moreover locally-installed AI.

That instrumentality is called Open Notebook, and it is conscionable arsenic powerful arsenic NotebookLM.

If you're superior astir your privateness and nan privateness of your data, Open Notebook is nan only measurement to go.

Think astir it this way: utilizing NotebookLM requires that you upload your sources to a third-party unreality service. Those sources could incorporate delicate accusation astir you, your family, your friends, aliases your company. Do you really want to manus that complete to a 3rd party?

I don't. 

That's why I opted for Open Notebook complete NotebookLM.

Let maine picture my acquisition installing this tool.

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It's each astir containers

Deploying Open Notebook requires an knowing of Linux and containers. Before you awkward away, utilizing containers isn't astir arsenic difficult arsenic you mightiness think. No, it's not astir arsenic easy arsenic double-clicking an installer file, but it's besides not arsenic difficult as, say, installing and utilizing a relational database. Without going excessively heavy into nan steps for installing Open Notebook, nan process looks for illustration this:

1. Install Docker
2. Clone nan Open Notebook Git repository
3. Configure nan docker-compose.yml and docker.env files to usage whichever LLMs you prefer
4. Deploy nan Open Notebook container
5. Point your browser to http://SERVER:8502
6. Create an relationship (it's free and only stored locally)
7. Define which LLMs are to beryllium utilized for circumstantial tasks
8. Create a notebook and upload your sources

If you're not acquainted pinch editing .yml files aliases utilizing Docker, deploying Open Notebook will beryllium a chore, but erstwhile you study really it's done, you'll person opened your world up to nan limitless world of containers… truthful it's a bonus.

The situation of choosing your LLMs

This is wherever things tin get a spot tricky pinch Open Notebook. Not each LLM is created equal. For example:

• Quen2.5-coder is bully arsenic a coding companion
• Wizard-math is simply a awesome logic partner
• Gemma 3 is simply a localized type of Gemini
• Llama 3 is awesome for long-form text, maintaining context, and performing analyzable reasoning.
• AnythingLLM is simply a bully action for moving AI agents and handling communal AI tasks.
• GPT4ALL is bully for archive study and building knowledge bases.
• GPT-OSS is utilized for reasoning and agentic tasks

Your champion stake is to determine connected really you scheme connected utilizing Open Notebook. Once you person nan work up and running, you'll request to prime a exemplary for tasks for illustration chat, embedding, usability calling, speech-to-text, transformation, and more. The bully news is that Open Notebook has documentation to thief you understand exemplary types and make nan correct choices.

Ease of use

Deploying Open Notebook is nan only situation pinch this tool. Once it's up and running, utilizing it is very simple. The process looks for illustration this:

1. Create a caller notebook
2. Add sources to nan caller notebook
3. Select nan exemplary you want to use
4. Query nan section AI astir your sources

Also: I turned a YouTube video into flashcards pinch NotebookLM - here's how

I ran immoderate speedy tests connected this and recovered it to not only beryllium easy to use, but accelerated and arsenic meticulous arsenic nan sources provided. In different words, if your uploaded sources are accurate, nan results will beryllium arsenic well. If your sources incorporate errors and incorrect information, truthful excessively will nan results of your chats.

For example. I downloaded this article arsenic a .docx record and past uploaded it arsenic a source. I past queried nan AI pinch "What are nan steps for installing Open Notebook?" The instrumentality dove into my sources, and past it responded based connected my penning and only my writing.

Next, I uploaded a different article I wrote connected deploying Docker, and past queried pinch "How do I instal Docker connected Ubuntu?" Once again, because nan root was accurate, nan results were arsenic well.

If my sources are meticulous nan results will be.

Jack Wallen/ZDNET

Open Notebook has been a existent game-changer for me. Until I discovered this tool, I had refused to usage Google's NotebookLM because I wasn't astir to upload sources to a third-party and past usage cloud-based AI to enactment connected those sources. With Open Notebook, I tin usage only locally-installed AI and not person to interest astir those issues.

Also: Upgrade your study crippled pinch NotebookLM - here's how

I've reached nan constituent wherever I will only usage locally-installed AI. With Open Notebook, I tin power nan root worldly it uses, and bask a level of privateness and information that cannot beryllium matched by cloud-based AI.