August 7, 2026

Video - DaVinci Resolve version 21 on linux

I am attempting to install DR 21 on Fedora 44.

You find the download links on the support page:

On the left, I see "Latest Downloads" and near the top is "DR Studio 21.0.4 Update". There are 4 buttons (Mac, Linux, Windows, Windows ARM). I click on Linux. This brings up a dialog asking who I am. In particular, it wants my serial number in an entry field on the right. This number is on the outside of the box, as well as on the card with the activation key. In fact chrome remembers it from the last time I did this. I click the register and download button and away it goes.

The download takes a while (it is big). It took about 20 minutes.
I end up with this 11G file! 

-rw-r--r-- 1 tom tom 11085024182 Aug  7 20:04  DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_21.0.4_Linux.zip
I will note that 20.0 was a 8.8G file.

Preparation

Based on my notes from a year ago when I installed 18 and 20 I am doing the following: 
su
cd /opt
rm -rf resolve
mkdir resolve
chown tom:tom resolve
This should allow me to do the actual install as user "tom". Next I install some libraries. These were needed for 18. They may not be needed for 21, but it won't hurt to install them. 
su
dnf update

dnf install -y apr apr-util
dnf install -y libxcrypt-compat libcurl libcurl-devel mesa-libGLU zlib

# I try the following and it says "nothing to do"
dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
# and of course it tells me I already have akmod-nvidia
dnf install akmod-nvidia
# the next installs 2 packages --
dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
The update has a lot to do, and it installs a new kernel. I probably should reboot before trying the actual install.

The following used "groupupdate", which is now sort of replaced by "group upgrade". I show the command I once used with the old dnf with comments, then what I tried with the new "dnf5". The upgrade for multimedia does nothing, and it has no clue what sound-and-video is. So these are pointless. My notes say they didn't do anything when I installed 18 and 20, so we just won't worry. 

#dnf groupupdate multimedia --setop="install_weak_deps=False" --exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin
# dnf groupupdate sound-and-video

dnf group upgrade multimedia
dnf group upgrade sound-and-video

Now we reboot.

The install

I do all of the following a user "tom".

The basic advice is to unzip it, then run the "run" file that will produce. If it was like the last install, it will also give me a PDF with instructions. 

cd /u1/Resolve
mkdir Davinci_21
cd Davinci_21
unzip ../DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_21.0.4_Linux.zip 
ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x 1 tom tom 11097695456 Aug  2 23:11 DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_21.0.4_Linux.run
-rw-r--r-- 1 tom tom        7107 Aug  2 23:10 Linux_Installation_Instructions.html
It only yields 2 files. To view the instructions, I use Ctrl-O in Chrome, navigate to the html file and I can look at it.

Then I launch the installer and immediately get an error:

The first problem -- libfuse

./DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_21.0.4_Linux.run
dlopen(): error loading libfuse.so.2
The obvious thing of "dnf install libfuse" tells me it doesn't have a match for libfuse. I see something called "libfuse3" in /usr/lib64, so apparently this is an old deprecated library. I learn that libfuse is a user-space library that lets programs talk to the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) kernel interface. The trick is this: 
dnf install fuse-libs

The next problem -- zlib

I try the installer again and it tells me "Please install the following missing packages: zlib" Running dnf to install this gives me: 
Package "zlib-ng-compat-2.3.3-3.fc44.x86_64" is already installed.
Zlib is a library to support a lossless compression algorithm sometimes know as "deflate". Apparently somebody rewrote it and decided to change the library name as well. Probably the new API is different.

The "zlib" package went away a long time ago. Some searching indicates that it is/was a package in Rocky Linux (i.e. RHEL) 9 -- but in Rocky 10 it is also gone, replaced by zlib-ng.

It seems that DR targets Rocky Linux 8.6 (maybe). Rocky is now up to 10; perhaps someday Black Magic will update their linux build scheme. It is possible to dig around and find a zlib RPM for Rocky-9, but this is not the road to travel. See below for the solution. 

zlib-1.2.11-40.el9.aarch64.rpm
This provides libz.so.1, which I see in /usr/lib64/libz.so.1

This requires: 

ld-linux-aarch64.so.1 (64bit)
ld-linux-aarch64.so.1 (GLIBC_2.17) (64bit)
libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.17) (64bit)
rtld (GNU_HASH)

Search and find what others have done

Searching on the zlib issue gave me this information:
DaVinci Resolve is technically only for Rocky Linux, so there are always some hiccups with installing it on Fedora.

I highly recommend the "davinci-helper" tool, it makes it super easy. It'll even check for and assist with the install of GPU drivers, codecs, dependencies, and has a video conversion tool if needed.

Rocky Linux, eh? I'm not going to install a different linux distro just to run DaVinci Resolve. Maybe if all I ever did was video editing. Rocky Linux is a repackaging of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) -- so you can run it without a contract (and without their logos if you care about that). This actually doesn't sound bad, and now I can understand why Black Magic made this choice, but I need to work out the issues with a Fedora install.

Black Magic even makes available a Rocky Linux install ISO (which has all the setup, but does not include DR itself:

The installer takes care of all dependencies - including standard libraries, Nvidia drivers and DeckLink drivers. When the installation is complete, you can reboot the system once, and download and install DaVinci Resolve using the instructions above.
Here is a 14 minute video that claims to explain how to install DR 21 on any linux system. In particular he is working with Fedora 44. This video gets the job done! I follow along (see below) and when I am done, I can start DR-21.

I already have rpmfusion set up -- I do this as per his instructions: 

su
dnf config-manager setopt fedora-cisco-openh264.enabled=1
dnf swap ffmpet-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
dnf install libva-nvidia-driver
The second command installs 4 and removes 8 packages.
The last installs just the libva-nvidia-driver package.
He says you may want to install other codecs, but does not do so, so I will wait until trouble develops.

Next the nvidia drivers, note that we have installed a more recent version (610) than the 595 he has in the video, which of course is as it should be. He points out that the driver will need to compile, taking 10-15 minutes. The modinfo command tests whether this has completed. A reboot will be needed to run the new driver. 

# dnf install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda (not needed, we already did this).
# Package "akmod-nvidia-3:610.57.04-1.fc44.x86_64" is already installed.
# Package "xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda-3:610.57.04-1.fc44.x86_64" is already installed.
modinfo -F version nvidia
610.57.04
I run xfce, and under "administration" there is a Nvidia X server settings gadget. It reminds me that my card is a GeForce RTX 3060.

He uses this scheme to get around the zlib issue: 

export SKIP_PACKAGE_CHECK=1
./DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_21.0.4_Linux.run -i
Indeed, it does not now complain about zlib. As he says, the library is indeed there, but not by the name DR looks for, but things will work.

It wants the superuser password, twice. It does not take long at all. When done, it tells me that DR was installed to /opt/resolve -- exactly as I expected. It says there is a common data directory: /var/BlackmagicDesign/DaVinci Resolve. (An evil filename with a space embedded).

However, if we try to launch resolve, it will mysterious fail and refuse to start.
DR has its own collection of libraries, but some of these old libraries will cause problems. If we remove the evil libraries, DR will use the newer versions that are part of our Fedora install rather than those in its private collection: 

cd /opt/resolve/libs
mkdir -p disabled-libraries
mv libglib-2.0.so* disabled-libraries
mv libgio-2.0.so* disabled-libraries
mv libgmodule-2.0.so* disabled-libraries
mv libgobject-2.0.so* disabled-libraries

Start it up

There is now an "icon" on my desktop. I click on it, and DR starts up! It wants me to activate, either using my license key or via a BlackMagic Cloud ID (which I do not have). I carefully type it in. It says it was accepted and that I have one more activation available (for some other machine) and it launches DR.

It finds an old project from when I was fooling around over a year ago. I double click the old project, it offers to upgrade it to DR-21 format, warning me that I cannot go back. It all looks good.

I open preferences and I see it has recognized my 3060 card with 12G of memory. It tells me it sees 16G of system memory -- which matches what /proc/meminfo tells me (I thought I had more ram than that?!).

He says to use the AV1 encoder for Youtube.

The acid test will be to see if I can read files from my cameras without codec nightmares.

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org