How to Install MakeMKV On Fedora Linux

by

MakeMKV is a powerful tool for working with DVDs and Blu-Ray. In fact, it is probably the most reliable way to work with and play Blu-Ray on a Linux system. MakeMKV is partially open source and partially proprietary. It is not distributed in Fedora’s repositories, which makes it a bit trickier to install it than some other applications.

Luckily for us, the source and binary blobs are available from the developer’s website. MakeMKV is in a state of perpetual beta testing for Linux, so it is free of charge but also not officially supported. In this tutorial, we will go through the step by step instructions of installing MakeMKV as well as all of its dependency packages on Fedora Linux.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to install the dependency packages for MakeMKV
  • How to install MakeMKV on Fedora Linux
How to Install MakeMKV On Fedora Linux
How to Install MakeMKV On Fedora Linux
Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System Fedora Linux
Software MakeMKV
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Installation of MakeMKV on Fedora Linux step by step instructions


Follow the step by step instructions below to see how to prepare your system by downloading the dependencies for MakeMKV. Then, we will go through the process of manually installing MakeMKV from the official download source. Let’s get started.

  1. Dependencies

    Before you can build MakeMKV, you are going to need to install some development tools and libraries on Fedora Linux. Start off by enabling the RPM Fusion repository. It is needed for FFMPEG, which MakeMKV relies on.

    $ sudo 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
  2. Now, install all of the dependencies. 
    $ sudo dnf groupinstall "C Development Tools and Libraries"
$ sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
$ sudo dnf install zlib-devel openssl-devel expat-devel ffmpeg ffmpeg-devel qt5-qtbase-devel
    WARNING
    In case you get a message about conflicting packages when running the third command, you can append the --allowerasing option to your command to erase the conflicting packages and proceed with the installation. Be sure to read all terminal output first so you understand what packages will be replaced.

  3. Downloading the Tarballs

    The MakeMKV developers ship it in two tarballs. One contains the open source components, and the other contains the binary ones. You can get them from this forum post, or you can pull them directly with wget, provided the version listed here is still the latest.

    $ cd ~/Downloads
$ mkdir makemkv
$ cd makemkv
$ wget https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-bin-1.17.5.tar.gz
$ wget https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-oss-1.17.5.tar.gz


    It is a good idea to make a build directory to download the tarballs into and compile them. Start by doing that, and pull the tarballs.

  4. Extract The Tarballs

    When you are done with downloading the tarballs, you can extract them both with these commands:

    $ tar xpf makemkv-bin-1.17.5.tar.gz
$ tar xpf makemkv-oss-1.17.5.tar.gz

  5. Compile and Install

    You need to build MakeMKV’s components separately. Begin with the open source part, and switch to the binary part. Ultimately, Fedora will see them as one application, anyway. Change directory into the open source directory that you extracted. In the directory, you can configure, compile, and install the source.

    $ cd makemkv-oss-1.17.5
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install
  6. You also have to set up and install the binary portion. Change directory into the binary directory and run make before installing it. 
    $ cd ../makemkv-bin-1.17.5
$ make
$ sudo make install

  7. Run MakeMKV

    MakeMKV is a graphical application built with Qt. You can search for it in GNOME, and launch it like you would any program that you installed regularly from Fedora’s repositories.

    We can now open and use the MakeMKV application on Fedora Linux. It works!
    We can now open and use the MakeMKV application on Fedora Linux. It works!

Closing Thoughts


In this tutorial, we saw how to install the MakeMKV application on a Fedora Linux system. Since it is not available in Fedora’s official repositories, it requires us to download dependencies and manually compile the program. MakeMKV may not be entirely open source, but it is a great option for dealing with DRM’d video from DVDs and Blu-Ray on Linux. MakeMKV enables you to play your videos, and of course, make .mkv file backups when needed.

Related Linux Tutorials: