This project aims to provide a ready-to-go container with all of the needed dependencies to install and run DaVinci Resolve on Linux, based on information compiled by bluesabre in his GitHub Gist. Davincibox is primarily intended for users of image-based systems such as Fedora Atomic Desktops and Universal Blue images, but it can be used on any Linux distro that distrobox is available on.
My own testing for davincibox has been with an AMD RX 6600XT GPU, an AMD RX 9070 GPU, and an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (i.e. Intel Arc integrated graphics). Other users have contributed test results here: #21
AMD GPUs use ROCm (AMD's official compute package). There have previously been stability issues with using ROCm, but otherwise everything does work. Note that AMD's official GPU support for ROCm is limited, and users of older AMD GPUs (such as the RX 500 series) may not have success with ROCm.
Intel GPUs use intel-compute-runtime. No issues have been found so far.
Previously, rusticl (via the mesa-libOpenCL package) was included as the default for AMD GPUs, but this was found to break ROCm entirely, and so is no longer included in davincibox-opencl.
I do not have an NVIDIA GPU at this time and cannot directly troubleshoot issues with using them. Support and troubleshooting for NVIDIA-related issues is very reliant on members of the community.
Davincibox has had limited testing with DaVinci Resolve Studio. Use at your own risk. See #26
DaVinci Resolve on Linux, especially the free version, has limited codec support. Unless you can show that certain codecs are available when using DaVinci Resolve outside of davincibox, but not when using davincibox, do not report issues about missing codecs here.
You will need Podman, as well as distrobox or toolbox.
You will also need the latest release of DaVinci Resolve from Blackmagic's website.
If you're less comfortable in the CLI, I recommend using the setup.sh script from this repository to help simplify the setup process, but ultimately use of the CLI is a requirement.
Important: Ensure lshw is installed on your system, as setup.sh uses it to detect whether you are using an Nvidia GPU or not. This is pre-installed on Universal Blue images, but you may need to install it yourself on other Linux distributions.
AMD uses ROCm, GPU support is very limited and so it may not work on older AMD GPUs (RX 500 series and prior). If the standard setup instructions do not result in a functional DaVinci Resolve, you can instead try using rusticl:
- Distrobox:
distrobox enter davincibox - Toolbox:
toolbox enter davincibox
Then, from inside davincibox:
sudo dnf install mesa-libOpenCL
# If you exclude the path below, run-davinci defaults to launching DaVinci Resolve.
# If you want to launch one of the other programs included with Resolve,
# use the path to its binary as shown below.
run-davinci -c /path/to/binary
If rusticl does work better for you and you would like to launch Resolve with rusticl via the desktop shortcut, you can adjust the DaVinciResolve.desktop file in $HOME/.local/share/applications.
Change the Exec= line as follows:
- Distrobox:
Exec=distrobox-enter -n davincibox -- /usr/bin/run-davinci -c /opt/resolve/bin/resolve %u - Toolbox:
Exec=/usr/bin/toolbox run -c davincibox /usr/bin/run-davinci -c /opt/resolve/bin/resolve %u
You can do the same for the other programs that come with DaVinci Resolve, too; just add the -c flag after /usr/bin/run-davinci.
For Intel GPUs, the intel-compute-runtime package is included and used by default.
If needed, rusticl can also be used via the same instructions in the AMD section above.
NVIDIA users will need to install the nvidia-container-toolkit on their host OS. If you are using a Universal Blue image such as Bluefin, this will already be installed. Otherwise, see NVIDIA's installation guide for instructions for your distribution.
You may additionally need to add a SELinux policy to allow containers to use your GPU. See the "Adding the SELinux policy module" in this guide. Otherwise, you may get an "Unsupported GPU processing mode" error when launching Resolve.
Open a terminal, then run chmod +x /pa
8000
th/to/setup.sh
Then, /path/to/setup.sh /path/to/DaVinci_Resolve_versionnumber_Linux.run
If you're more comfortable in a GUI:
If you're using GNOME, open Files and navigate to where you downloaded the script to. In the example below, the script is in the same folder that I extracted the DaVinci Resolve download to. I recommend you do the same for ease of use, as the rest of the instructions will assume you have done so.
Right-click, and select Properties.
Then, make sure "Executable as Program" is toggled on.
Right-click on an empty spot in the folder. You should see either "Open in Console" as in the screenshot, or "Open in Terminal." Either will be fine.
In the newly-opened terminal window, enter the command below. Replace 'version' with the version of DaVinci Resolve that you are installing (see screenshot for example):
./setup.sh ./DaVinci_Resolve_version_Linux.run
Then, follow any further prompts in the installation script.
First, get davincibox set up. There are two different builds of davincibox, depending on whether you use an NVIDIA GPU or not:
NVIDIA Users
Distrobox:
distrobox create -i ghcr.io/zelikos/davincibox:latest --nvidia -n davincibox
Toolbox:
toolbox create -i ghcr.io/zelikos/davincibox:latest -c davincibox
Intel & AMD Users
Distrobox:
distrobox create -i ghcr.io/zelikos/davincibox-opencl:latest -n davincibox
Toolbox:
toolbox create -i ghcr.io/zelikos/davincibox-opencl:latest -c davincibox
On the host, run --appimage-extract on your DaVinci Resolve installer
/path/to/DaVinci_Resolve_version_Linux.run --appimage-extract
Then, run setup-davinci squashfs-root/AppRun distrobox/toolbox from within the container
e.g.
Distrobox:
distrobox enter davincibox -- setup-davinci squashfs-root/AppRun distrobox
Toolbox:
toolbox run --container davincibox setup-davinci squashfs-root/AppRun toolbox
The suffix at the end is for the add-davinci-launcher script. If omitted, setup will still run, but adding the launcher to your application menu won't work.
You can still run add-davinci-launcher separately, as either add-davinci-launcher distrobox or add-davinci-launcher toolbox, depending on what you're using.
After installation completes, you can remove the squashfs-root directory.
After setup, run sudo dnf update in the container to ensure drivers are up to date:
Distrobox:
distrobox enter davincibox -- sudo dnf update
Toolbox:
toolbox run -c davincibox sudo dnf update
Usually, you'll only need to update the packages in the container (i.e. driver updates), not the container image itself. In this case, simply run sudo dnf update in davincibox as shown above.
Otherwise, a full upgrade requires re-creating the davincibox container with the newest version of the image. This should only needed if there has been a new GitHub release for davincibox, as this may include changes to the setup-davinci or add-davinci-launcher scripts. When reporting issues, a full upgrade should be performed first.
If a new version of davincibox is available and you need to upgrade, you can do so manually or with setup.sh.
Run setup.sh upgrade, then follow the installation steps above.
First, run podman image pull ghcr.io/zelikos/davincibox:latest
Then, follow the Uninstallation section below and go through manual setup again.
Run ./setup.sh remove, or
Distrobox:
# If you are upgrading, you can avoid this line
distrobox enter davincibox -- add-davinci-launcher remove
distrobox stop davincibox
distrobox rm davincibox
Toolbox:
# If you are upgrading, you can avoid this line
toolbox run --container davincibox add-davinci-launcher remove
podman container stop davincibox
toolbox rm davincibox
DaVinci Resolve uses ALSA. In davincibox this is supported via the pipewire-alsa plugin, which re-directs sound to pipewire.
This however requires that the host system provides a pipewire server. If your host-system uses some other sound server, this might not work.
You can either convert your host system to provide pipewire or change your davincibox instance to use any sound server you have running.
For example, if your host-system uses pulseaudio, you can change davincibox as follows:
> distrobox-enter -n davincibox
> sudo dnf remove pipewire-alsa
> sudo dnf install alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
If you're a user of DaVinci Resolve Studio and have a USB Licence key, some Linux distributions may require you to add a udev rule to enable access to communicate with the USB key from within the container.
An example udev rule is as follows:
# Place this file in /etc/udev/rules.d/
# Recommended file name: 90-davinci-usb.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="096e", TAG+="uaccess"
# Allow access to toolbox / distrobox
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="096e", MODE="0664", GROUP="users"
Davincibox ships with switcheroo-control for handling multi-GPU systems, primarily intended for prioritizing the dedicated GPU over the integrated GPU in laptops. If you have a system with multiple dedicated GPUs, however, you may need to tell switcheroo-control which one to use by default.
Enter davincibox with:
- Distrobox:
distrobox enter davincibox - Toolbox:
toolbox enter davincibox
Then, to list the GPUs switcheroo-control detects, run list-gpus; this is a wrapper for switcherooctl list that includes a needed environment variable for it to work in distrobox.
The output should look something like this:
Device: 0
Name: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P [Intel Arc Graphics]
Default: yes
Environment: DRI_PRIME=pci-0000_00_02_0
Use the Device: # line to determine the index for the GPU you want switcherooctl to use, then,
sudo sed -i "s,switcherooctl launch,switcherooctl launch -g #," /usr/bin/run-davinci
replacing # with the appropriate number determined previously.
Sean Davis, AKA bluesabre
- For putting together this Gist; davincibox's Containerfile and setup scripts were heavily based on that information
Jorge Castro and Universal Blue
- Jorge's blog post about declaring distroboxes planted the seed for davincibox to become a thing
- Pretty much everything on the GitHub CI part of this was originally based on uBlue's Boxkit