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Claude Desktop on Fedora, as a native RPM

Claude Desktop Fedora 44 is my open-source project for running Claude Desktop on Fedora. Anthropic publishes an official Linux build of Claude Desktop, but only as a .deb. My script takes that build, checks it, and rebuilds it as a native RPM, so dnf can install, upgrade and remove it like any other package.

It is unofficial. Anthropic ships the app; this project only repackages it for dnf. It is x86_64 only for now.

Install Claude Desktop on Fedora

There are two ways. Both build the RPM on your own machine from Anthropic's .deb.

By hand

sudo dnf install rpm-build binutils file xz curl gnupg2

git clone https://github.com/dewzor/claude-desktop-fedora.git
cd claude-desktop-fedora
./build-official.sh
sudo dnf install build/official/claude-desktop-*.rpm

Then launch Claude from the application menu, or run claude-desktop. The manual build runs as your own user. Installing the prerequisites and the finished RPM uses sudo.

With daily updates (COPR)

sudo dnf copr enable dewzor/claude-desktop
sudo dnf install claude-desktop-builder

claude-desktop-builder is a small MIT-licensed package. It does not contain Claude Desktop and never will. What the package ships is the build itself: build-official.sh, a claude-desktop-update command, and a systemd timer that is enabled when you install it.

The timer runs once a day. It asks Anthropic's signed apt index which build is current and checks the signature. If that exact build is already installed, it stops without downloading the .deb or rebuilding the RPM. If a newer build has shipped, it fetches Anthropic's .deb on your machine, rebuilds the RPM and installs it with dnf.

You can also run it yourself:

sudo claude-desktop-update --check
sudo claude-desktop-update

The first says whether a new build exists. The second rebuilds and installs now. Removing claude-desktop-builder leaves Claude Desktop installed. To remove the app itself, run sudo dnf remove claude-desktop.

What works

  • The Claude Code tab, with its integrated terminal
  • Cowork
  • MCP, including the Chrome extension MCP bridge
  • System tray
  • The native window frame, with no patching
  • GNOME Activities search ("Ask Claude")
  • Opening .mcpb, .dxt and .skill files in Claude

It is tested on Fedora 44 with KDE Plasma and with GNOME, both on Wayland. In container tests in October 2026 it built and installed cleanly on Fedora 43, 44 and rawhide, and the COPR package builds for all three.

What it changes and what it checks

What you run is Anthropic's app, repackaged but not changed.

  • Unmodified payload. It starts from Anthropic's official Linux x86_64 build, whose payload is self-contained Linux content under /usr/lib/claude-desktop. No app.asar patching, no native-module stub, no launcher wrapper.
  • Sandbox on. The Chromium sandbox stays enabled: chrome-sandbox is setuid 4755, and there is no --no-sandbox.
  • Signed and pinned downloads. The .deb comes from Anthropic's signed apt repository, not a web redirect. The script checks the InRelease signature against Anthropic's release key, pinned by its fingerprint, 31DD DE24 DDFA B679 F42D 7BD2 BAA9 29FF 1A7E CACE. That is the same key Anthropic publishes at downloads.claude.ai/claude-desktop/key.asc and in its Claude Code setup docs.
  • Strict checks. It refuses bad signatures, expired or revoked keys, and an index past its Valid-Until date. The Packages index and the .deb must match the signed SHA256s, and the package version must match the index.

History and credits

This didn't start with me. In December 2024 Brandon Sneed (bsneed) wrote a Fedora build script that repacked the Windows installer. My repository grew out of it.

In November and December 2025 (v6 to v8), Juan Boullosa (boujuan) added Fedora 43 title bar fixes and automatic download of the latest version to that Windows-repack script. randy-johnson fixed a titleBarOverlay regex in it (#3).

Then the Windows repack could no longer run Claude Code. Current Claude Desktop hard-requires its native module @ant/claude-native, and Claude Code's terminal needs node-pty. In a Windows repack both are win32 binaries. sharpandpearl wrote build-official.sh and the analysis of why the repack stopped working (#4). With v9, on August 29, 2026, the project switched to Anthropic's official Linux build.

Since then:

  • v9.1 (October 16, 2026): the "building RPM" step went from about 4 minutes to about 20 seconds, and it works on a 2 GB machine. itsnitinr started this with multithreaded zstd payload compression (#5).
  • v9.2 (October 21, 2026): downloads verified against Anthropic's signed apt repository, plus GNOME search, file associations and the rest of the .deb's Recommends. Contributed by arcanistzed (#6).
  • v9.3 (October 22, 2026): the build works whatever the system locale is. Turkish and some other locales broke a check. Anıl Sürmeli (anilsrml) reported and fixed it (#7 and #8).

Our earlier Flatpak was based on gordonmessmer's com.anthropic.Claude manifest.

The old Windows-repack script, build-fedora.sh, is still in the tree, but it is not the recommended path. The full record is in the CHANGELOG.

In October 2026 the repository left GitHub's fork network. Why that mattered for search is in Why my GitHub fork wasn't showing up in Google.

Problems and questions

If the build, the install or the update timer fails, please open an issue on GitHub. Packaging bugs belong with this project, not with Anthropic. The COPR project is at copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/dewzor/claude-desktop.

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