3. Install Open WebUI

Installation Steps

Update and Install Screen
SSH into your Ubuntu server and run:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install screen

Install Essential Python Packages

To make things easier and avoid global dependency issues, install a couple of Python packages. The package python-is-python3 allows you to run Python commands using python instead of python3, and python3-venv is needed to create virtual environments.

sudo apt install python-is-python3 python3-venv

Set Up Your Python Virtual Environment

Using python3-venv is essential for creating isolated Python environments, and is a key step in keeping your Open WebUI setup neat and hassle-free. Essentially, it lets you create a dedicated Python environment just for this project, meaning all the dependencies and packages you install stay isolated from your system’s global Python setup.
This way, you avoid pesky version conflicts or dependency issues that can crop up when multiple projects share the same system resources. Not that I will certainly be using multiple applications on this virtual machine, but its the way to go in either case.

Start a screen session, then create and activate your virtual environment:

screen
python3 -m venv openwebui
source openwebui/bin/activate

Install Open Web UI

Use pip to install the package. The installation might take a few minutes, so grab a coffee:

pip install open-webui

Launch Open WebUI

Once the installation is complete, launch the interface:

open-webui serve

Access Your Installation

That’s it—Open Web UI is now running! Disconnect from the screen session using Ctrl + A then Ctrl + D, and open your browser. For example, if your server IP is 192.168.1.54, navigate to:

http://192.168.1.54:8080