How to install LM Studio CLI in Linux Terminal

LM Studio CLI installation guide without a UI in a terminal instance.

1. Open a new terminal to run LM Studio CLI, or use tmux

2. Get LM Studio or run below:

wget https://lmstudio.ai/download/latest/linux/x64?format=AppImage -O 'LM_Studio.AppImage'
chmod u+x ./LM_Studio.AppImage

1. Run LM Studio via

./LM_Studio.AppImage

You might see below:

[802435:0215/073628.027773:FATAL:sandbox/linux/suid/client/setuid_sandbox_host.cc:166] The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly. Rather than run without sandboxing I'm aborting now.

If so, do the below instead:

./LM_Studio.AppImage --no-sandbox

1. You then might see the below, especially if you are in a cloud instance with no desktop:

[807101:0215/073740.801969:ERROR:ui/ozone/platform/x11/ozone_platform_x11.cc:249] Missing X server or $DISPLAY
[807101:0215/073740.802000:ERROR:ui/aura/env.cc:257] The platform failed to initialize.  Exiting.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

If so, install a "fake" desktop simulator within the terminal:

sudo apt-get install xvfb

1. Then use xvfb and launch LM Studio:

xvfb-run ./LM_Studio.AppImage --no-sandbox

1. Then get LM Studio's LMS / CLI in another terminal, or after CTRL+B+D for tmux

~/.lmstudio/bin/lms bootstrap

1. Open a new terminal or tmux then run:

lms

If you see -bash: lms: command not found please run lms in a new terminal window!

1. Now download a model like Qwen3-Coder-Next like below (if you see the below stalling or not progressing, change the 2nd line to HF_HUB_DISABLE_XET=1 hf download unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF or use export HF_HUB_DISABLE_XET=1

pip install -U huggingface_hub
hf download unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF \
    --local-dir unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF \
    --include "*UD-Q6_K_XL*"

1. We then import the model via:

lms import \
    unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF/UD-Q6_K_XL/Qwen3-Coder-Next-UD-Q6_K_XL-00001-of-00003.gguf \
    --symbolic-link --user-repo "unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF" -y

Choose Don't categorize (will put the model under imported-models/uncategorized) (Option 3)

/.lmstudio/models
lms get https://huggingface.co/unsloth/Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF@Q4_K_XL