Forums Technical Discussion Houdini Launcher won't start up on Linux Mint anymore

Houdini Launcher won't start up on Linux Mint anymore

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Maui
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Hey,
I just wanted to upgrade to H21 on Linux Mint using the Launcher but I have some problems getting Houdini Launcher to start up. It tried to perform an update when I first started it but I guess there was an problem while installing it. So I tried to install it manually but up until now I didn't have any luck.

When I try to launch it via the Shell I get the following error
./houdini_launcher
qt.qpa.plugin: From 6.5.0, xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin.
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, offscreen, vnc, vkkhrdisplay, linuxfb, minimal, xcb, minimalegl.
Has anyone a solution to this problem? I'm relatively new to Linux but know my why around some things.

Houdini 20.5 still works fine however.
Thanks for your help
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alexwheezy
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Additional packages are required for H21
https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/houdini-210-linux-package-requirements/ [www.sidefx.com]
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Maui
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alexwheezy
Additional packages are required for H21
https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/houdini-210-linux-package-requirements/ [www.sidefx.com]
Do I just add those commands into a terminal to get them to sownload or do I have to add anything in addition?
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alexwheezy
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Maui
alexwheezy
Additional packages are required for H21
https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/houdini-210-linux-package-requirements/ [www.sidefx.com]
Do I just add those commands into a terminal to get them to sownload or do I have to add anything in addition?
Yep, you need to do something like this: 
sudo apt install [list of packages]
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Maui
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Ok I tried it but I still can't get the Houdini Launcher to startup getting the same error as before :-(
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protozoan
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For some distros this list isn't complete, you're still missing a dependency.

I would specifically check for that xcb-cursor lib that is mentioned in your error (I've had issues with it on another distro).
Martin Winkler
money man at Alarmstart Germany
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LiBoNing
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As sidefx mentioned in the H21 requirements: "If you continue to encounter Qt errors on startup, then check that you have installed the Qt required packages found here:"
https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/linux-requirements.html [doc.qt.io]

Same issue happened to my ubuntu 24.04 and resolved after installing those Qt packages.
MotionCOPs toolkit - pushing COPS into motion design and dynamic effects territory.
https://github.com/Boning1011/motion-cops [github.com]
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Maui
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LiBoNing
As sidefx mentioned in the H21 requirements: "If you continue to encounter Qt errors on startup, then check that you have installed the Qt required packages found here:"
https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/linux-requirements.html [doc.qt.io]
This did the trick. Thanks for your help!
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the_arrow
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It turns out I had some old environment variables pointing to my 20.5 installation.

Figured that out when going through an strace log.

---

I have all the dependencies installed (both the Houdini and the Qt ones), but I get a crash that seems to be related to dynamically loading some library:
...
(anonymous namespace)::utLoadDSOAndFindFunction(...)
...
Unfortunately there is no information about what library is used.

Fully updated and newly restarted Ubuntu 25.04.

Crash log attached.
Edited by the_arrow - Oct. 13, 2025 03:03:30

Attachments:
crash.arrow_26832_log.txt (2.8 KB)

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Fracteller
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Hi,

Maybe this could help someone in the future, In my clean install of Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon (and with a fully updated system + required packages for H21 already installed) the only package I had to *manually apt install is the libxcb-cursor0 that I saw in the error trying to install Houdini Launcher.

There were two errors, I tried to only install xcb-cursor0 it didn't work, so I installed libxcb-cursor0 and tried to re-run the launcher installer which worked. Re-tried installing xcb-cursor0 gave me the same error "Unable to locate package xcb-cursor0".

I guess the only missing element in my setup was libxcb-cursor0
Edited by Fracteller - Nov. 2, 2025 07:52:26
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changehpx
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I also encountered this problem on Rocky 9.5, and then I used the following code:sudo dnf install xcb-util-cursor
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