Fixing DaVinci Resolve Startup Errors on Linux

2 min
Notes

I installed DaVinci Resolve on Linux by running the downloaded .run installer, but the application would not start. This note records one workaround I used on Debian Sid. It is not a general fix for every Linux startup failure.

Blackmagic Design currently lists Rocky Linux 8.6 and CentOS 7.3 as the minimum Linux environments on its download page. Debian Sid is outside that listed support. Treat the steps below as a community workaround for a specific class of library errors.

Inspect the startup error

Run Resolve from a terminal so you can see its error output:

/opt/resolve/bin/resolve

The errors this workaround addresses look like one of these:

/opt/resolve/bin/resolve: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_string_free_and_steal

/opt/resolve/bin/resolve: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_task_set_static_name

If your error is different, do not move these libraries as a guess. Check the message and your distribution first.

Move the bundled GLib libraries aside

Resolve bundles libraries under /opt/resolve/libs. In my case, bundled GLib files conflicted with the system libraries. Move the matching files to a backup directory instead of deleting them:

sudo mkdir -p /opt/resolve/libs.backup
sudo mv /opt/resolve/libs/libglib-2.0.so* /opt/resolve/libs/libgio-2.0.so* /opt/resolve/libs/libgmodule-2.0.so* /opt/resolve/libs.backup/

Try starting Resolve again. If the files are absent, the shell patterns match nothing, or a new error appears, stop and restore the files rather than applying more library changes blindly.

To roll back, move the backed-up files into the original directory:

sudo mv /opt/resolve/libs.backup/libglib-2.0.so* /opt/resolve/libs/
sudo mv /opt/resolve/libs.backup/libgio-2.0.so* /opt/resolve/libs/
sudo mv /opt/resolve/libs.backup/libgmodule-2.0.so* /opt/resolve/libs/

This workaround came from a community discussion on Reddit. Library layouts and compatibility can change between Resolve and distribution releases.