Steam stopped launching for me

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XFCE x64.

I’ve tried deleting the ~/.steam and any other ~/**.steam* files but no luck, trying from the terminal just yields steam.sh[...]: Starting SteamRT3 Steam. Immediately after spitting that out the terminal returns to waiting for a command. I even tried uninstalling then reinstalling it but even that didn’t work. As a side issue I’m also having an issue with setting up a launcher for opening the terminal in root mode (I can use pkexec to get there in the terminal just fine but launching to that mode is not working out).

Edit: I’ve also just tried emptying the ~/.cache folder

Edit 2: Just found a solution, deleted the ./.local/share/Steam folder and that got steam to boot again

Edit 3: If peops found this after trying other search terms then add those terms into a reply here with something like “My search terms:” prefixed to it, should help others find it easier later.

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have you activated beta RT3 in pref Steam ?

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It most likely would have thrown an error. You would have seen it in your logs, journalctl -f will watch them live.

Or when any app like that doesn’t launch from the taskbar/menu, launch it from the terminal. Severe errors like this are often put to standard out.

And Steam is an easy to remember terminal command, as you just type:

steam

Maybe it was just a single game’s manifest file that was problematic, who knows now.

You can filter journalctl by boot numbers, date ranges, unit types, and more. So it probably is still there.

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The issue reported here is that the Steam RT3 Beta client was enabled within Steam but some users have found Steam unable to be launched after this is enabled (Issues · ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux · GitHub)

This is overkill and will result in loss of other data also.

To disable the RT3 beta client simply remove or rename ~/.local/share/Steam/.steam-enable-steamrt64.client file.

Really before enabling a beta/test option make sure you understand where the appropriate forum, troubleshooting, and feedback mechanisms are for that option. For the Steam RT3 beta option that would be the Steam forum and RT3 issues register.

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I’d also try launching Steam from a terminal to see if it throws any specific error messages. A recent update or a missing runtime dependency can sometimes break startup without showing anything in the GUI.

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@zxuiji

In future, if you believe you have found a solution to your issue, please create a new post containing the information rather than editing your first post. Make sure to include only relevant information that might help others with the same issue.

Adopting this practice allows a post to be marked as the Solution to the topic, as it is intended – the first post in a topic cannot be marked as such.

In this instance, instructions given by @bananamangodog were more than sufficient to solve your issue;

That post has now been marked as the Solution post.

Regards.

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