Notes from the maintainer:
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This package now tracks the official Anthropic desktop app for Linux (announced 2026-07). If you watched it in its earlier, unofficial incarnation, everything below is new.
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It repackages Anthropic's official .deb verbatim from their apt repository (downloads.claude.ai), with upstream-published checksums. Cowork works out of the box: the package ships symlinks bridging the Debian paths the app expects (virtiofsd, OVMF firmware) to their Arch locations.
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First Cowork use downloads a ~1.3 GB VM image, which expands to roughly 12 GB on disk under ~/.config/Claude/vm_bundles/. If the VM fails to start, check that your user can access /dev/kvm (some setups need the 'kvm' group).
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If you previously applied a manual Cowork fix, remove your handmade symlinks before installing, or pacman will report file conflicts: /usr/bin/virtiofsd and /usr/share/edk2/OVMF_{CODE,VARS}_4M.fd (an old /etc/modules-load.d/vhost_vsock.conf is harmless but no longer needed — the module auto-loads).
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On desktops Chromium doesn't recognize (Hyprland, Sway, ...) sign-in is stored insecurely, and switching between DEs logs you out. Fix: copy the .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications/, add --password-store=kwallet6 (or gnome-libsecret) to its Exec= lines, then run: update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications (skipping that last step breaks the claude:// sign-in redirect). This is upstream Chromium behavior, not a packaging issue.
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CachyOS users: your distro repo ships its own (older) claude-desktop without the Cowork fix, and it shadows this package in AUR helpers. Install with: paru -S aur/claude-desktop
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paru 2.1.0 may offer to install qemu-system-aarch64/edk2-aarch64 on x86_64 — that's paru bug #1497, not a packaging error; they're inert and safe to decline (build with makepkg) or remove afterwards.
Pinned Comments
kevindiaz314 commented on 2026-07-05 02:49 (UTC)
Notes from the maintainer:
This package now tracks the official Anthropic desktop app for Linux (announced 2026-07). If you watched it in its earlier, unofficial incarnation, everything below is new.
It repackages Anthropic's official .deb verbatim from their apt repository (downloads.claude.ai), with upstream-published checksums. Cowork works out of the box: the package ships symlinks bridging the Debian paths the app expects (virtiofsd, OVMF firmware) to their Arch locations.
First Cowork use downloads a ~1.3 GB VM image, which expands to roughly 12 GB on disk under ~/.config/Claude/vm_bundles/. If the VM fails to start, check that your user can access /dev/kvm (some setups need the 'kvm' group).
If you previously applied a manual Cowork fix, remove your handmade symlinks before installing, or pacman will report file conflicts: /usr/bin/virtiofsd and /usr/share/edk2/OVMF_{CODE,VARS}_4M.fd (an old /etc/modules-load.d/vhost_vsock.conf is harmless but no longer needed — the module auto-loads).
On desktops Chromium doesn't recognize (Hyprland, Sway, ...) sign-in is stored insecurely, and switching between DEs logs you out. Fix: copy the .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications/, add --password-store=kwallet6 (or gnome-libsecret) to its Exec= lines, then run: update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications (skipping that last step breaks the claude:// sign-in redirect). This is upstream Chromium behavior, not a packaging issue.
CachyOS users: your distro repo ships its own (older) claude-desktop without the Cowork fix, and it shadows this package in AUR helpers. Install with: paru -S aur/claude-desktop
paru 2.1.0 may offer to install qemu-system-aarch64/edk2-aarch64 on x86_64 — that's paru bug #1497, not a packaging error; they're inert and safe to decline (build with makepkg) or remove afterwards.