For various reasons, I’ve decided to ditch Windows and go with Pop_OS for my home laptop now. Unfortunately, there is no official Windows-like installer for Pop_OS for Maya and there are some manual steps involved to get it to all built correctly. I followed along with this guide for the most part, but either the page has typos or they renamed packages after writing it.

These are the commands I used to get everything built correctly:

tar xvf Autodesk_Maya_2020_ML_Linux_64bit.tgz

sudo apt-get install -y alien dpkg-dev debhelper build-essential zlib1g-dev
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeehio/libxp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libxp6

sudo apt install lsb-core

cd Packages
sudo alien -vc *.rpm
sudo apt install -y ./adlmapps17_17.0.49-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -y ./adlmflexnetclient_17.0.49-1_amd64.deb 
sudo apt install -y ./adlmflexnetserveripv6_17.0.50-1_amd64.deb 
sudo apt install -y ./adsklicensing9.2.1.2399_0-1_amd64.deb 
sudo apt install -y ./bifrost2020_2.0.3.0-2_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -y ./substance-in-maya-2020_2.0.3-2_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -y ./maya2020-64_2020.0-236_amd64.deb

sudo /opt/Autodesk/AdskLicensing/9.2.1.2399/helper/AdskLicensingInstHelper register -pk 657L1 -pv 2020.0.0.F -el EN_US -cf /var/opt/Autodesk/Adlm/Maya2020/MayaConfig.pit


sudo apt-get install -y libfam0 libcurl4 libpcre16-3 libjpeg62 libxm4 xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre16.so.3 /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/libpcre16.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libssl.so.1.1 /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/libssl.so.10
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1.1 /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/libcrypto.so.10
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXp.so.6 /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/libXp.so.6
xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi
xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi
xset fp rehash

cd ~/tmp
wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/libpng/files/libpng15/older-releases/1.5.15/libpng-1.5.15.tar.gz
tar -zxvf ./libpng-1.5.15.tar.gz
cd libpng-1.5.15
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/libpng
make check
sudo make install
make check
sudo ln -s /usr/local/libpng/lib/libpng15.so.15 /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/libpng15.so.15

mkdir ~/maya/2020

sudo mkdir /usr/tmpa
sudo chmod 777 /usr/tmp

echo "MAYA_DISABLE_CIP=1" >> ~/maya/2020/Maya.env
echo "LC_ALL=C" >> ~/maya/2020/Maya.env



Start Maya by running

/usr/autodesk/maya2020/bin/maya

If you happen to get a warning about either ssl or hashlib, like the following:

// Error: root : code for hash md5 was not found.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/autodesk/maya/lib/python27.zip/hashlib.py", line 147, in <module>
globals()[__func_name] = __get_hash(__func_name)
File "/usr/autodesk/maya/lib/python27.zip/hashlib.py", line 97, in __get_builtin_constructor
raise ValueError('unsupported hash type ' + name)
ValueError: unsupported hash type md5 //

it’s most likely because the files _hashlib.so and _ssl.so that Maya ships with were not built for an Ubuntu flavored Linux distros. The support folder has files that are built for Ubuntu 14, but they seem to work just fine on my Pop_OS! 20.04 LTS machine.

Switch the Red Hat files out for the Ubuntu files like this:

sudo mv /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_ssl.so /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/RHEL_ssl.so 
sudo cp /usr/autodesk/maya2020/support/python/2.7.11/ubuntu_ssl.so /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_ssl.so

sudo mv /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_hashlib.so /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/RHEL_hashlib.so 
sudo cp /usr/autodesk/maya2020/support/python/2.7.11/ubuntu_hashlib.so /usr/autodesk/maya2020/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_hashlib.so