Hey everyone, the final update for Substance Painter 2024 caused launch failure on most modern Linux distributions, including Gentoo and Ubuntu. So a few months back I spent several days debugging why and finding an exact fix. I have detailed the steps below and recorded a video of fixing the problem start to finish. I was going to make a better video but never got around to it, so I may as well post what I have.
Basically, there are several missing libraries that are being referenced by Painter, as well as artificially missing libraries due to the Steam sandbox. So this works as a fix on Ubuntu 25, and you should be able to modify the process to work on any other distribution. If you have any questions, send me a message and I will answer as soon as possible.
Also, the last version of Painter I own is 2024, so I don't know if this fixes similar issues with 2025 or 2026, but theoretically it should.
- Navigate to the installation folder of Substance Painter 2024 in Steam.
Right-click → Manage → Browse Local Files
Open a Terminal in the root of the Substance Painter 2024 installation folder.
Check for missing libraries by running:
ldd "Adobe Substance 3D Painter" | grep "not found"
This will list any libraries that are missing.
- Identify missing libraries. In my case, there were three:
libGLU.so.1libtiff.so.5libxml2.so.2
- Fix
libGLU.so.1by installing the missing package with the following command:
sudo apt install libglu1-mesa
6. Verify you have libtiff6 and libxml2 by installing the packages with the following command:
sudo apt install libtiff6 libxml2-16
7. Fix libtiff.so.5 by creating a symbolic link from libtiff6 to libtiff5 by running:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtiff.so.6 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtiff.so.5
8. Fix libxml2.so.2 by creating a symbolic link from libxml2.so.16 to libxml2.so.2:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxml2.so.16 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxml2.so.2
9. Launch Steam with compat slr disabled by Closing Steam and relaunching with the folowing command:
steam -compat-force-slr off
10. Disable Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 (Scout) for Substance Painter 2024 by enabling Legacy Runtime 1.0:
Right-click → Properties → Compatibility → Legacy Runtime 1.0