Perplexity makes it easy to research just about anything.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Perplexity is an AI answer engine that provides real-time answers to the questions you ask. It’s very much like Copilot, Aria, or any other AI tool; it’s geared specifically toward learning and less toward generative content. In other words, Perplexity is like having a set of dictionaries on your desktop with an unlimited amount of information to be found.
According to the Perplexity website, “If you want to learn about nuclear fission and you have a PhD in math, it can be explained. If you want to learn about nuclear fission and you are in middle school, it can be explained. Perplexity is a tool that you use, not an AI you talk to.”
Also: I tried Perplexity’s assistant, and only one thing stops it from being my default phone AI
That difference is important. Unlike your standard AI chatbots, Perplxity is geared toward research, education, and keeping you informed. You can ask Perpexity to tell you what’s in the news today or define string theory. You could ask Perplexity the score of last night’s game or the conversion formula from Celsius to Fahrenheit.
I’ve been using Perplexity to summarize the latest news and help me research certain aspects of my latest sci-fi novel. It works quite well for these purposes.
If you use MacOS or Windows, you’ll find .dmg and .exe files, respectively, on the Perpexity download page. If, on the other hand, you use Linux, the only option is an AppImage. Although AppImages work well on Linux, they can be problematic for some users because, by themselves, they don’t make it possible to integrate the app with your desktop menu.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to accomplish this, so you don’t have to open the terminal window or a file manager every time you want to run the app.
Let me show you how it’s done.
How to install Perplexity on Linux
What you’ll need: To make this work, you’ll need a running instance of a Linux distribution and a user with sudo privileges. I’ll demonstrate this on Pop!_OS, but the tool we’ll use to manage the AppImage will work on any distribution that supports Flatpak. That also means you’ll need to have Flatpak installed. The good news is that many distributions ship with Flatpak pre-installed. If you find your version of Linux doesn’t, you can install it from the standard repositories.
Before we get to Perplexity, you’ll need to install Gear Lever, which is a tool that simplifies working with AppImages. Gear Lever can integrate an AppImage into your desktop menu and even be used to check for AppImage updates.
To install Gear Lever, open a terminal window and issue the command:
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flatpak install gearlever
Once the app is installed, if you don’t find it on your desktop menu, log out and log back in, and it’ll be there, ready to go.
Next, download the Perplexity AppImage from the SourceForge download site. Once the app has been downloaded, open your file manager, navigate to the Downloads directory, and double-click the Perplexity AppImage file.
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This should open Gear Lever, where you’ll find it asks to be unlocked. Click Unlock and then click “Move to the app menu.” You can then either click Launch or close Gear Lever and then open the app from your desktop menu.
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Gear Lever greatly simplifies using AppImages on Linux.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Navigate to your desktop menu and locate Perplexity. Click the entry, and the app should open. On Ubuntu, I received a FUSE error, which was resolved with the following two commands:
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sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt-get install libfuse2t64 -y
Perplexity should open for you now.
Using Perplexity
Using the Perplexity app is quite simple, but the first thing you’ll need to do is sign up. You can use the app with a free plan, and all you have to do is click Sign Up or click “Continue with Google.”
You can sign up either with your Google account or an email address.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Once you’ve signed up, it’s time to make use of the app, which is very simple. All you have to do is click New Thread and then type your query. However, I would suggest using one particularly handy feature… Spaces.
The Spaces feature makes it far easier to manage all of your queries.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
With Spaces, you can create isolated workspaces that have to do with a particular topic. For instance, I have the following spaces:
- Novel Research
- News Of The Day
- Life Questions
- Tech Research
Also: How to install an LLM on MacOS (and why you should)
To create a Space, click Spaces in the left sidebar and then click “Create a Space.” In the resulting pop-up, give the space a name, an optional emoji, an optional description, optional custom instructions, and click Continue. To change the AI model, you must have a paid account. Click Continue when finished and your new space will open, ready to work. Within Spaces, you can also upload files, add links, and set a recency. Sources are used to provide references and citations alongside the answers generated by the AI. These sources also allow you to dig deeper into a topic.
Creating a new Space in Perplexity.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Another handy feature of Perplexity Spaces is that you can share them via X, WhatsApp, Facebook, or a link.
Also: How to run a local LLM as a browser-based AI with this free extension
Once you start using the Perplexity app, you’ll find it to be quite intuitive. If you do decide the free account isn’t enough, the Pro account is $20/month–> and adds unlimited quick searches, 300+ searches per day, select preferred AI model, upload and analyze unlimited files, and visualization.
