After trying to get Steam to work on various flavours of Ubuntu (24.04 LTS, 24.10, 25.04 beta and some Ubuntu based distro’s) and coming up blank I decided to wait for final release
Yesterday I installed a squeaky fresh 25.04 bog standard Plucky on a clean SSD, no dual boot, nothing. The graphics card is a Powercolor RX9070XT. I installed Steam from the App Center
Problem Description:
After starting Steam (even after reboot) the system seems to go into a death loop. A black window opens (the size of the initial Steam opening screen), but the system effectively becomes unresponsive.
Occasionally there are very short periods where the system seems to respond ( mere seconds) but it then becomes unresponsive again. Only a hard reset works.
Additionally, when I select an alternative game installation location in steam, the system defaults to the base location after every reboot.
What I’ve Tried:
I have tried installing Steam from the Steam .deb directly. This does allow steam to start an log on to the account, but so far I have not been able to start any game.
Oddly, the same thing happens on 24.10 (clean install).
Relevant System Information:
7800X3D, 670E Mobo, Powercolor RX9070XT, 64GB, single boot Ubuntu 25.04
Screenshots or Error Messages:
There are no error messages and no identifiable errors are logged
I did try multiple solutions suggested for previous releases, including older versions with updated Kernels, updated Mesa, updated Vulkan, etc.
Happy Gaming,
Pete
I’m having the same issue with steam with the same version and graphics card. Waited for final release yesterday, and still not working. I wonder what it could be.
Similar issues here on Wayland with a fresh install of Ubuntu 25.04. My system also temporarily unfreezes as landiepete describes, I can shut down steam during this time and the system becomes responsive again fully afterwards.
When using X11 instead, I can actually log into steam and use it normally. My system crashed though when trying to start Counter-Strike 2, I think I submitted the report on this properly.
Edit: I am not sure if editing in place is the way to go here or if I should add a new message.
It seems to me that the Steam-Snap is using Mesa 24.2.3, while the system ships with Mesa 25.0.3. Mesa 24.2.3 does not properly support the 9070XT if I remember correctly. Can I somehow force the snap to use the system-wide installed Mesa version?
Edit 2: I uninstalled&purged the snap install of steam and got the steam-installer via apt, then installed steam. Then the systems Mesa 25.0.3 is used and both Steam & Counter-Strike 2 are working fine.
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I will try that over the weekend. I went back to 24.04LTS, with Mesa 25 update and the AMD posted RX drivers, Steam from the Steam provided deb, which I got to work once. Sort of. I rebooted the system and since I’ve gotten it to start once but with a black screen (I could hear the game running through the headphones). It isn’t the IG/PEG issue, as I have IG disabled in BIOS.
But since then it’s gone back to starting (I can see that on the Steam display) and just stopping again.
The short of it : I don’t know how you did that. Because Ubuntu refuses to do it on the count of i386 support missing and another error message I can’t remember.
Installing 386 support via dpkg does enable me to install Steam, but the game still launches, runs and then immediately quits, without even showing me a game screen.
Incidentally, it works on LTS with an nVidia 3080ti, which I was hoping to finally get shot of.
just wanna be sure, did you remove the Snap version of Steam before installing the deb version?
you tried launching from the terminal? I think the command is steam
To avoid undue interference from leftovers from previous attempts every one of my experiments on 24.04LTS, 24.10 and now 25.04 is made on clean installs
Pete
Did you report these issues to the ones packaging steam for snap? It would be a good thing if they got this information. I found the way to report a bug and there is a button to report a bug that links you to the github page and this issue mentioned here seems to be known:
the bug report is soon 2 months old and it seems that the snap is not a good idea to use for many.
So official steam version is better to use it seems:
https://store.steampowered.com/about/download
I’ve had this issue with 24.04 that steam did not function properly. Unfortunate that the snap version is still broken as it is the way most new users will use and get truly frustrated that it doesnt work. It is quite easy today to just grab the deb and install it but it is not an obvious solution as the steam-package is in the app-centre. I do hope the ones managing the snap version finds a good solution going forward. Gaming on linux is just amazing and should be treated with high priority.
It was the steam version i got running properly with 24.04. I did try the flatpak version as well but didn’t know how to get it to connect to my gamedrives so as i didnt know about flatseal, but that is an option too.
Try running the command steam from the terminal. The output may help.
I went back to 24.04 LTS because at least all of my other applications like SQL and some other stuff now at least works the way it should, without all the error messages from non-updated ppa’s and such.
I have since discovered the game not starting is because I have it on an ntfs drive. Adding the necessary statements to fstab solved this.
Now, the game does appear to start, but the screen goes completely black, there is no sound, and no way to kill the process b/c window switching no longer works. There is nothing for it but a hard reset.
Maybe someday.
You need to get kernel 6.14 + Mesa 25
https://liquorix.net/
Thanks, I did have the latest Mesa, but as I’m on 24.04 LTS the kernel was still 6.11. I updated it to 6.14, but of course now I’m having secure boot errors.
Edit : It works, the game starts and it makes the right noises.
Thanks everyone, special kudos to YamiYukiSenpai !
Yea, unfortunately, non-default kernels need Secure Boot disabled.
Even Pop!_OS has that issue, IIRC.
Resetting the keys in BIOS appears to have solved that.
Pete