Steam Not Working on Linux Mint / MATE 17.3 64-bit

Posted on by John Nash

locked-computer-cartoonAll I  wanted to do was try Factorio under steam. Psi.

Any one know how to fix this problem with Steam?

$ steam
Running Steam on linuxmint 17.3 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0_client)
libGL error: unable to load driver: r600_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: r600
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

(never returns) Steam then sits there like this:

$top (scroll down to bottom of list)
PID 3464 PR 20 NI 0 VIRT 16740 RES 11524 SHR 6464 S %CPU 0.0 %MEM 0.3 TIME+ 0:00.04 COMMAND steam

I had progress using the fix found at http://askubuntu.com/questions/654566/steam-doesnt-start-libgl-error

To fix it simply open the terminal and run these commands

rm ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6
rm ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1

Steam should then work properly.But make sure not to install the propeiatry AMD drivers as they are very bad for the stability of the OS compared to the open source drivers.If you are getting low performance with the open source drivers then simply upgrade the Mesa version by adding the xorg edgers ppa

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

After that type this in order to upgrade the Mesa version

sudo apt-get update & sudo apt-get upgrade

Then reboot and the new Mesa driver should be loaded.

x

I did not load the mesa driver from the ppa, but it did start working after steam automagically ran some updates.

y