alt Hacker NewsI wish they (authors of DaVinci Resolve and the Photo Editor) paid more attention to Linux platform. Theoretically DaVinci Resolve runs on Linux, but getting it run is a very bad experience on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 24.04. I even paid for the DaVinci license, as I read somewhere that for Linux it's necessary in order to have all codecs supported. It did not help. Fortunately there were no problems with refund.
There are whole guides online how to walk around these issues and even then I could not get the audio working. Somehow it relies on some old ALSA API, which is no longer maintained/supported on Ubuntu/Kubuntu, or I'm just too stupid to make it work. AI assistants could not provide working solution for me either.
I've moved back to Linux a year ago after around 10 years of Windows (and I used to use Linux Slackware for ~15 years beforehand). I am amazed how big progress the KDE made and whole Linux ecosystem. Gaming these days is just as easy as on Windows, which was my primary reason to switch to Windows. My printer just works now. Even music production is excellent on Linux now. There is plenty of great software options to choose from and they just work - as I would expect from the mature ecosystem.
This all feels so good, given how Linux is not pushing trash into my computer (OS-bound spyware/bloatware), has excellent, customizable UI. Full freedom. I do feel that I own my hardware.
Yet I miss DaVinci Resolve. For now I use Kdenlive, which is nice for simple editing, but feels unfinished, or I just don't know how to use it correctly.
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I recently used Resolve (just the free version) for a project. It was my first time seriously using the software but I ended up spending a lot of time with it - lots of timeline editing, keyframe animation, some simple Fusion compositions, and a fair bit of work in the Fairlight page, rendering out daily . I did all this on my beloved Arch Linux workstation, and frankly it was rock solid, apart from exactly one crash when using the timeline keyframe editor - something that was solved by upgrading Resolve to the latest version.
I was really impressed by how well it worked for me on Linux.
I think these things might have helped:
- I use an X11 desktop (Cinnamon), not Wayland. I've tried it out on a GNOME Wayland desktop but it seemed quite a bit more clunky and froze frequently.
- PipeWire runs the system's audio routing, so Resolve just appears as another ALSA client, and I can then use wiremix to send to my preferred speakers or headphones. (I haven't tried any audio input yet)
- I didn't try to install Resolve natively, I used davincibox [1] to install and update it within a container (it uses distrobox, which then uses podman).
I'll now be purchasing the studio version, which hopefully will work as well.
I wonder if https://github.com/zelikos/davincibox would make it easier and more stable, I haven't tried it myself yet.
Autodesk have been the same with Maya on Linux. The 2027 version has just been released, and it still doesn't have full Wayland support. The VFX Reference platform doesn't mandate Wayland support. And strangely enough, Maya versions prior to 2025 work perfectly fine on Wayland (they migrated to Qt 6 with 2025)
I got it working with the help of Gemini, here's my chat if you want to try again <https://gemini.google.com/share/50fa089e2f2c>
Exactly my thought. On Windows I used the free version for casual video editing and making memes. On Linux it just doesn't work. I managed to somehow fix the audio problem, then it had issues with codecs, and in general it was very miserable experience.
I'm not sure how much this will help you, but it should work for Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, so it probably works for Ubuntu as well https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/1784/how-to-inst...
I use this project to run Resolve Free/Studio on Linux: https://github.com/fat-tire/resolve
It helps you build and run Resolve in a Docker or Podman container. I’ve personally used it on Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch-based setups (well, CachyOS), and it’s worked great for me.
Right now it supports Nvidia very well. I’m also personally working on adapting it for AMD GPUs so I can run Resolve on my Strix Halo workstation.
One especially nice thing about this setup is that I can run multiple versions of Resolve on the same computer. If a new beta comes out, no problem — I can build a new container and try it out while keeping my stable version as my daily workhorse.