On Ubuntu 20.04 I had to get help on getting the update tools for compiling MAME. Cesare Falco help me out on which ones need to be change.

sudo apt-get install git build-essential python libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libfontconfig-dev libpulse-dev qt5-default

to this

sudo apt-get install git build-essential python3-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libfontconfig-dev libpulse-dev qtbase5-dev

Reason why.

E: Package 'python' has no installation candidate
E: Package 'qt5-default' has no installation candidate

Way too slow on compiling on my dad laptop. Intel core i5 with 6gb of memory. I tried the -j3 and it just crash the terminal. I just use make without it. Took over 5 hours.

So far no issue on running MAME. I just right click on the home/mame0246 and then bring up terminal. Type in mame and then hit enter to load it. Or just right click on mame file and then click on run to load it. Ether way.

W11 Home 64-bit + Nobara OS / AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.59 GHz / RAM 64 GB