Heyo,
I had Steam running just fine, turned my computer off, turned it on again, and now everything works fine except Steam won’t launch. When I click it in the Task Manager Tray, when I launch it from the Super Menu (either the Runtime or the Native commands), or when I try to launch it from the Terminal. No matter what I do, I get no errors and it’s not in the list of running processes. I’ve even reinstalled it. It seems like it successfully execute starting the application, but doesn’t actually open anything. All my apps are up to date and I even manually updated Steam via the terminal and nothing’s changed.
Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.1.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.6.0
Qt Version: 6.7.2
Kernel Version: 6.6.54-2-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6-Core Processor
Memory: 31.2 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT
Manufacturer: ASUS
Have you tried launching it from a terminal window? If it throws an error, then that’s the best way to catch it.
Note: In order to paste terminal output here — no screenshots, please — just mark it with the mouse, click on the </> button in the toolbar of the post editor window, and paste the contents of the clipboard between the two lines of ``` that will appear.
I initially installed it via the Package Manager application. I also Package Manger to uninstall and reinstall it. It’s the version from the Manjaro Official Repositories. When installing, it prompts me if I want to install Steam Native, which is also from the official repo.
They are indeed in /usr/bin/
~ which steam-native ✔
/usr/bin/steam-native
~ which steam ✔
/usr/bin/steam
I’ve tried uninstalling the Native package, I’ve tried running both the base and the Native separately, I’ve uninstalled them and reinstalled them via terminal, and a few other things. While tinkering around I tried downloading Steam from Flatpack instead of the Official Repo via the Package Manger, and that actually did launch correctly, but I’d rather use the Manjaro version if possible.
I think you mean “Manjaro Official Repositories”. It gets confusing when members requesting assistance mix-up Manjaro repos, Arch repos, and the AUR, which contains no packages, just PKGBUILDS to install packages outside of those official repos.
I would think that you could have either one, but not both, or even three (with the Flatpack) at the same time…
But I’m out of here as I can’t draw from personal experience like others can.
I don’t want to mislead by pretending to know something I just don’t know.
All the best!
If I may speculate, I’ve heard people complain about Manjaro because it delays certain updates to verify that they’re stable, so there can sometimes be a mix up between app versions and dependency versions depending on when they get approved by Manjaro. I don’t think I’ve personally had this issue before, but is this a possibility?
Unlikely if you are using software installed from Manjaro’s official repos. If it was a dependency issue on Stable branch, then I’m sure there would have been lots of posts about it since the last Stable update 4 weeks ago.
However, if you have installed some AUR packages to replace those in the official repos on your system, then you may have dependency issues, as AUR packages are built against Arch, and Manjaro’s Unstable branch is more on-par with Arch than Stable branch.
Something else I would suggest is that you try running Steam on a Plasma Wayland session, instead of X11.
Updating to the adwaita-icon-theme-legacy-46.2-3 package seems to resolve some issues.
Edit:-
sudo pacman -Syu adwaita-icon-theme-legacy
Some of the reasons a package may be held back would be to avoid such complication; to ensure compatible package versions are finally released to Stable in unison. I believe impatience is the key factor to understanding where most of these complaints might originate.
Personal opinion only.
This is nothing that can’t be rectified by a little research; and there are plenty of resources both within this very forum; and without.
Basic BASH commands are always a hoot to start with:
It’s not that the games won’t launch, it’s that the Steam application itself doesn’t launch.
I agree, it’s why I personally chose Manjaro, and continue to recommend it to friends and family that express any interest in switching their OS (usually between Windows and Chromebooks, so I inform them about Linux as an option). I’ve been on rolling release distros before and have generally preferred my Manjaro experience (especially the last 3ish months. I used to bounce between Windows and Manjaro, but I’ve not recently had any reason to boot back into Windows). But that still doesn’t mean that there can’t be an edge case issue where some packages end up slightly out of sync because they get approved as stable at different times and weren’t tested against each other.
I know some basics for my use cases, things like file navigation and some npm commands, and Google helps with the rest. It’s just a rabbit hole I have no need nor time to explore, like sports stats or comic books.
There’s plenty of time for Steam Games, though, right?
Just point and click.
An issue was mentioned in the Stable Update 2023-07-10 announcement. This is clearly over a year old; if your system has been sufficiently maintained it shouldn’t be relevant after all this time.
However, as this is the only noted issue I can find that was due to acknowledged bug(s), I’ll add the content here for reference:
A while ago the Steam Runtime developer maintaining the library detection/promotion “greatly encouraged” that the Steam package would (opt)depends on lib32-libnm and friends. The bugs have been opened since alas
In the absence of an updated steam package with updated dependencies,
A workaround is to install lib32-libnm
I am genuinely thankful for your help, I’ve been poking at the issue in my free time. It’s not my highest priority right now so I’ve not made much progress, until maybe now?
According to the KSystemLog, every time I try to open Steam I get an error in plasmashell:
Priority: Warning
Unit: plasmashell
kf.plasma.quick: Exposed with no visual parent. Window positioning broken.
Just based on that, it sounds like when the application tries to launch, Plasma doesn’t know where to put the window so it just closes with nowhere to go. So I’m now looking into ways to fix that.
P.S. You have been helpful and polite, but I’ll never understand the obsession with getting everybody to have your same interests and hobbies. I’ve rotated hobbies over the years, when I was in high school I actually got really into tinkering on Linux machines and that’s when I started learning a lot of terminal commands, but I’ve since forgotten most of them because I never needed to use them. And I really don’t have much time for games lately, just like once or twice a week, and I’d rather be playing a game or reading a book than running terminal commands and reading documentation for fun. I hope I’m not sounding rude, I respect tech-heads and their encyclopedic knowledge, and I agree that more people should have at least a basic understanding of how their technology works, but not everybody needs a complete understanding of skills they’ll never need.
Whilst I’m sure it’s true, I only had two issues… the first was with paru AUR ready for update before Manjaro caught up (for two weeks) which led me to replace it in my preferences with yay.
The other examples were simply rebuilds required… but steam is coming through multilib. It’s running fine for me on Plasma Testing.
