Install Zoom Client on Fedora 45 / 44

Zoom ships a signed RPM for Fedora, but dnf won’t check that signature for you. Install the downloaded file with dnf install ./zoom_x86_64.rpm and it prints “skipped OpenPGP checks” and carries on, even after you import the Zoom key. So the job is to install Zoom on Fedora with one extra command that verifies the package, then fix screen sharing, because the GNOME desktop on Fedora runs Wayland only and the capture setting in Zoom needs pointing at PipeWire.

Original content from computingforgeeks.com - post 50223

You get two install routes here: the vendor RPM with the 2026 Zoom signing key, and the community Flatpak from Flathub. Every command below was run in November 2026 on a Fedora 45 VM with the Workstation GNOME group on Wayland and Zoom Workplace 7.2.5, and the RPM install was repeated on Fedora 44. Zoom sharing goes through the GNOME screen share portal, which we checked on the same desktop.

Prerequisites

The RPM is x86_64 only, and the install pulls in a full Qt and GStreamer stack if your machine doesn’t already have a desktop. You need:

• Fedora 45 or 44 on x86_64, Workstation or any desktop spin
• A user with sudo rights
• About 1.5 GB free for the RPM route, 2.5 GB on a minimal install that has no desktop libraries yet
• A Zoom account only if you plan to host meetings; joining works without one

If you already run Flatpak apps, the Flathub route needs nothing else. If you don’t, the Flatpak and Flathub setup on Fedora explains the Fedora Flatpaks remote that ships enabled and why Flathub is a separate step.

Download the Zoom RPM

Zoom keeps a stable “latest” URL that redirects to the current build on its CDN, so you never have to look up a version number. Pull it into your home directory.

curl -fsSLO https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_x86_64.rpm

Before installing anything, ask rpm whether it trusts the file. On a machine that has never seen the Zoom key, the answer is no.

rpm -K zoom_x86_64.rpm

Digests match, but rpm can’t check the signature yet:

zoom_x86_64.rpm: digests SIGNATURES NOT OK

Querying the package header shows which key it wants:

rpm -qp --qf "%{NAME} %{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}\n%{RSAHEADER:pgpsig}\n" zoom_x86_64.rpm

Our download was signed on 30 October 2026 with key ID 4f2197399706ac24, and rpm reports NOKEY because that key isn’t in the database yet:

That key ID matters if you installed Zoom on Fedora before 2026. The 6.2.11 RPM we installed for the earlier version of this guide, built in November 2024, carried key ID 7b04a1b8dd79b481, while the current key was only created in January 2026. A key you imported back then does not match the ID this RPM asks for, so it will not verify the current package. Import the current one even if rpm -qa gpg-pubkey already lists an older Zoom entry.

Import the Zoom signing key

Zoom publishes its package signing key at a fixed URL. Download it to a file first, so you can read the fingerprint before you trust it:

curl -fsSL -o zoom-package-signing.pub https://zoom.us/linux/download/pubkey
gpg --show-keys --with-fingerprint zoom-package-signing.pub

The key is a 4096-bit RSA key created on 15 January 2026, owned by the Zoom code signing team. Its last 16 hex digits, 4F21 9739 9706 AC24, are the key ID the RPM asked for:

pub   rsa4096 2026-01-15 [SC]
      84C3 65D6 CC9A 4886 CA92  6BCC 4F21 9739 9706 AC24
uid                      Zoom Communications, Inc. <[email protected]>
sub   rsa2048 2026-01-15 [A]
sub   rsa2048 2026-01-15 [E]

If the fingerprint you see differs, stop and don’t import it. Otherwise add it to the rpm database.

sudo rpm --import zoom-package-signing.pub

Now run the same signature check that failed a minute ago.

rpm -K zoom_x86_64.rpm

Both the digests and the signature pass this time:

zoom_x86_64.rpm: digests signatures OK

On the lab VM the whole sequence ran like this, from the fingerprint to the passing check:

After the import, rpm -q gpg-pubkey lists an entry starting with gpg-pubkey-84c365d6cc9a4886ca926bcc4f2197399706ac24 next to the Fedora release key, and it stays there after you remove Zoom. Keep it, because the next RPM you download is signed with the same key and verifies without another import. If Zoom rotates the key again, the symptom is the same NOKEY line you saw before the import, so a failed rpm -K on a machine that used to pass is your cue to fetch the key again and compare fingerprints.

Install Zoom with dnf

Point dnf at the local file. The ./ prefix is what tells dnf it is a path and not a package name in a repository.

sudo dnf install ./zoom_x86_64.rpm

With the Workstation GNOME group installed every dependency was already present, so the transaction held a single package that unpacks to 953 MiB under /opt/zoom. Watch the warning near the end:

“Warning: skipped OpenPGP checks for 1 package from repository: @commandline” is dnf5 telling you it did not verify the file, and it printed that line even with the Zoom key imported. On Fedora, dnf enforces signatures for packages from a repo with gpgcheck on, while local files fall under a separate localpkg_gpgcheck setting that is off by default, so the check is simply skipped. A tampered RPM would install just as quietly. That is why the rpm -K step above is not optional, since it is the only signature check this install gets, and why it belongs in any script that pulls the latest build unattended.

A minimal system is a different story. The same command on a Fedora Cloud image, which has no desktop libraries, resolved 270 packages, downloaded 211 MiB and used 2 GiB of disk, mostly Qt, GStreamer, Mesa and the X11 client libraries. Zoom still installed cleanly there, so a minimal install follows the same steps with a much longer dependency list.

The package installs /usr/bin/zoom as a symlink to /opt/zoom/ZoomLauncher and adds a Zoom.desktop entry, so start it from Activities by typing “zoom”, or from a terminal:

zoom &

Zoom opens on its home screen. You can join a meeting by ID without signing in, and the version string at the bottom is the quickest way to confirm which build you’re running:

Zoom now calls the desktop app Zoom Workplace, which is why the window title no longer says “Zoom Cloud Meetings” as older guides show. The app also writes its settings to ~/.config/zoomus.conf on first launch, which comes up again in the screen sharing section.

Install Zoom from Flathub instead

A fresh Fedora install lists only the fedora Flatpak remote, so add Flathub first. The --if-not-exists flag makes the command safe to rerun:

sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Install the app by its Flathub ID. On a desktop you can drop sudo and approve the polkit prompt instead; over SSH there is no agent to show that prompt, which is why the lab used sudo.

sudo flatpak install flathub us.zoom.Zoom

The install pulls the freedesktop 25.08 runtime with its GL and codecs extensions, then the app. Check what landed and what the sandbox allows:

flatpak info us.zoom.Zoom
flatpak info --show-permissions us.zoom.Zoom

The permissions are wide for a sandboxed app: network, every device under devices=all (cameras and microphones need it), both the Wayland and X11 sockets, and a Documents/Zoom folder for recordings:

Two facts decide whether the Flatpak is the right pick. Flathub marks us.zoom.Zoom as a community package that is “not verified by, affiliated with, or supported by zoom.us”, and its version lagged the vendor RPM on our test day. flatpak info reported an older build than the RPM, which already had the 31 October release that fixed blank shared content on NVIDIA systems running native Wayland. Both builds default to XWayland, so that fix only matters once you switch Zoom to native Wayland, but if you’re on NVIDIA graphics and plan to, the gap is a reason to take the RPM.

Launch it from Activities or with flatpak run us.zoom.Zoom. The home screen is identical to the RPM build apart from the version string:

Don’t install both builds for daily use. They keep separate settings (the Flatpak writes to ~/.var/app/us.zoom.Zoom/config/zoomus.conf), so a change you make in one never shows up in the other.

Pick the RPM or the Flatpak

We’d run the RPM on a work machine and the Flatpak on a shared family laptop. The table sums up what the lab showed for each route:

	Vendor RPM	Flathub Flatpak
Maintained by	Zoom	Flathub community, unverified
Version on 3 November 2026	7.2.5 (6661), built 30 October	7.2.1 (5760)
Signature check	Manual, with rpm -K	Flathub repo signature, automatic
Updates	Manual re-download, no repo	flatpak update and GNOME Software
Disk on Workstation	953 MiB	App plus a shared runtime
Sandbox	None	Network, all devices, Wayland and X11 sockets

The update row is the one people miss. The RPM installs no repository, and dnf repolist after the install still showed only fedora, fedora-cisco-openh264 and updates, so dnf upgrade will never move Zoom forward on its own. A machine that installed Zoom once and forgot about it keeps that build until someone downloads a new file, which is exactly how the NVIDIA sharing fix would pass you by. If you can’t commit to checking by hand, the Flatpak is the safer default even with its lag.

Set up Zoom screen sharing on Wayland

The GNOME session on Fedora is Wayland only, and Zoom does not switch to native Wayland just because it is running in one. Both builds wrote xwayland=true into their zoomus.conf on first launch, so the main window runs through XWayland, while screen capture is a separate setting inside the app. Check the session and the portal stack first:

loginctl show-session 1 -p Type
rpm -q xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-gnome pipewire
grep -niE "xwayland|wayland" ~/.config/zoomus.conf

Your session number may differ from 1; loginctl list-sessions shows it. On our VM all three portal packages were installed by the Workstation group, and the Zoom config showed the XWayland default.

If xdg-desktop-portal-gnome is missing, which happens on a minimal install with GNOME added by hand, install it and log out and back in. Without it no app can capture a Wayland screen, Zoom included.

Next, make Zoom capture through PipeWire. Zoom hides the switch two levels deep, which is the part most people never find:

1. Click Settings at the bottom of the left rail in Zoom
2. Open Share screen in the Settings sidebar
3. Scroll down and click Advanced

Numbers on the figure follow the same three clicks.

1. 1Settings
2. 2Share screen
3. 3Advanced

On the Advanced page, open the Screen capture mode list and choose Pipewire Mode. The list offers Auto Mode, Original Mode, Pipewire Mode and Pipewire Mode (Remote Control). Auto Mode is the default and leaves the choice to Zoom; picking Pipewire Mode yourself takes that guess out of the picture, and the Remote Control variant is meant for sessions where someone else drives your screen:

1. 1Screen capture mode
2. 2Pipewire Mode

The choice stuck in our lab: after quitting Zoom, removing the RPM and installing it again, the Advanced page still showed Pipewire Mode. It isn’t stored in zoomus.conf (that file didn’t change when we switched modes), so set it in the app rather than hunting for a config key.

When you share in a meeting with Pipewire Mode on, Zoom asks the screen cast portal for a stream and GNOME shows its own picker. We requested a session from the same portal with a short D-Bus script, and GNOME answered with this dialog, offering a single window or the whole display:

Clicking Share returned response 0 and PipeWire stream node 67 at the full 1280×800 display size, and GNOME put an orange screen sharing indicator in the top bar for as long as the stream ran. That indicator is your proof the capture is live, and clicking it stops the share from GNOME’s side:

One limit of this test: sharing inside a live Zoom meeting needs a host account, which the lab didn’t have, so the portal was exercised directly rather than from a meeting. If the GNOME picker never appears when you click Share Screen in a meeting, the capture mode is still on Original Mode or the GNOME portal backend is missing. If others see a black or frozen share, try Use TCP connection for screen sharing on the same Advanced page, whose own description names that symptom. The same portal also backs GNOME Remote Desktop on Fedora, so a broken portal tends to break both. KDE users get the same picker from xdg-desktop-portal-kde after the Plasma move to Wayland.

Update Zoom

For the RPM, download the latest file again, check its signature, and hand it to dnf as an upgrade:

curl -fsSLO https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_x86_64.rpm
rpm -K zoom_x86_64.rpm
sudo dnf upgrade ./zoom_x86_64.rpm

When the CDN still serves the build you have, dnf says so and changes nothing, which is what we got on the test day:

zoom_x86_64.rpm: digests signatures OK
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package "zoom.x86_64" is already installed.
Nothing to do.

The Flatpak updates with everything else from Flathub, either in GNOME Software or with one command.

sudo flatpak update us.zoom.Zoom

Zoom keeps release notes that list Linux builds by date, and checking them every few weeks is the only update reminder the RPM route gives you. The Fedora 45 post-install checklist covers the rest of the desktop setup if this is a fresh machine.

Remove Zoom

Each build comes off with its own tool. Remove the RPM with dnf, then the Flatpak and any runtime nothing else uses with flatpak:

sudo dnf remove zoom
sudo flatpak uninstall us.zoom.Zoom
sudo flatpak uninstall --unused

The RPM removal frees the full 953 MiB, but it leaves your profile behind. ~/.zoom and ~/.config/zoomus.conf were both still there afterwards, along with the imported signing key. We first ran the Flatpak uninstall with --delete-data, and it printed error: Cannot autolaunch D-Bus without X11 $DISPLAY right after removing the app, because that flag run through sudo works on root’s home and session, not yours. That is why the commands above leave it off and the data folder gets removed by hand below:

Delete those two paths if you’re done with Zoom for good, since ~/.zoom holds the logs and local data of the app, and do the same for ~/.var/app/us.zoom.Zoom if you ran the Flatpak, which is where its settings live. Run this as your own user, not with sudo:

rm -rf ~/.zoom ~/.config/zoomus.conf ~/.var/app/us.zoom.Zoom

Leave the signing key in place if you might reinstall, because the next Zoom RPM verifies against it. If you also run Zoom on Ubuntu machines, the Zoom client guide for Ubuntu and Debian covers the .deb side.