Setup Guide: AI-Mini PC for Local-LLM hosting

Utilities

• Mini PC with shared memory

  • in this example I will use a: Minisforum AI X1 Pro, AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 / 64GB RAM

• Ubuntu Desktop 24 LTS

• XRDP as remote desktop solution (skip and use SSH if you want to go truely headless)

• Fuse (requirement for LM-Studio)

• Assasin-AppImageLauncher (will make LM-Studio App Installation easier)

• LM-Studio as hosting tool for local LLM's

• Startup

• Common Issues

Installing Ubuntu

1. Flash a USB Stick with Ubuntu 24 LTS

   1. Important: Kernel Versions newer than 6.16 currently struggle with AMD iGPU support; you will likely not have the Vulcan-Graphics-Acceleration available. You'd be running your LLM on CPU only, suffering great speed losses in terms of tokens per second.

2. Enter you Mini-PC's UEFI

   1. Deactivate "Secure Boot" (can be reactivated later)

   2. Set USB to slot one in Boot-Order Settings

3. Plug in the USB Stick and reboot

4. Follow the setup guide

   1. Consider switching off "require passwort at startup" this will make unsupervised reboot easier with the obvious security downside.

Installing XRDP as RemoteDesktop solution

To avoid some issues with the RDP solutions build into Ubuntu (keyring issues on reboot with) we will go for XRDP.

1. sudo apt install xrdp

2. Check status of XRDP: ( XRDP runs automatically after installation)

   sudo systemctl status xrdp

3. add the xrdp user to the ssl-cert group sudo adduser xrdp ssl-cert

4. Restart xrdp service: sudo systemctl restart xrdp

5. get your Mini-PCs IP-Adress ip addr

6. Configuring Firewall Replace the IP-Adress with the one you just retrieved. sudo ufw allow from 192.168.33.0/24 to any port 3389 sudo ufw allow 3389

Use a Remote Desktop Client of your choice on an different computer to access the Mini-PC via XRDP

The Login credentials alre equal to the local user account on the Mini-PC

Important: You must be logged out on the Mini-PC in order to connect via XRDP Important: Make sure you the build in RDP tools and if applicable thrid party RDP tools are not running.

Install Fuse

LM-Studio requires Fuse to run on Ubuntu

sudo apt install libfuse2

Install AppImageLauncher

LM-Studio is only available as .app image at the time of writing this guide.

The installation can be done without additional tools but it will be easier if you use an AppImage loader like assasin.

1. Download AppImageLauncher https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher/releases/

2. Install AppImageLauncher

Install LM-Studio

1. Download LM-Studio Linux Version  https://lmstudio.ai/download

2. Open LM-Studio .app file using AppImageLoader

3. click "Integrate and Run"

4. Testrun LM-Studio

5. Check if the Vulcan iGPU appears under *LM-Studio/Settings/Hardware

6. Download LLM's of your choice

   1. Recommendations in Dec. 2025

      1. Gemma 3 12B

      2. Gemma 3 4B

      3. Qwen 3 4B 2507

Setup-Autostart

1. Open Ubuntu build in Startup tool

2. Name it as of your taste and browse for LM-Studio App located in the Apllications folder (AppLauncherDefault)

3. add this flag behind the path sepparated by one whitespace --no-sandbox

Common Issues

• You might observe the APU/iGPU vanishing when removing the external display after initial setup.

  • This can be solved by installing a virtual display or using a HDMI-Dummy Dongle.

• Be aware that your Router will assign an IP-adress to the computer linked to the used network device (eth1, eth2, wifi, USB-4....) if you change this after initial setup you will not be able to connect via RDP without the applicable IP-adress.

  • Best practice is to used fixed IP-adress