Couldn't set up Steam data - please contact technical support

[Vortex]

Got this error every time trying to launch the Steam.
OS: Ubuntu 14.10 x64

[vv1987]

You could try this:

mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
rmdir ~/.steam/steam
ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
rm -rf ~/.steam/bin

Which is essentially doing what the steam executable is trying to do, but failing.

[names_r_useless]

Thank you for these steps, it worked! I was having this same problem :)

To those with this same problem: keep in mind you need to find where your ".local" and ".steam" directories are. Mine aren't in my root (~), but in my account's home directory ("/home/[username]")

[Lily The Smol]

I did this, and now when I try to launch Steam, it doesn't do anything!

[Lily The Smol]

Just tried launching it in the terminal and it says I'm missing the drivers r600_dri.so, r600, swrast_dri.so, and swrast!
Help?

[qcove1]

Just tried to install steam on my new Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon) installation and it won't work at all. I get an error message "Couldn't set up Steam data - please contact technical support" . I thin tried the steps offered by Chap-Un-Duang to no avail. Very disappointed. Steam worked well my on old Mint 17.3 installation on the same computer. Can anyone help?

[ZekThePenguin]

Originally posted by qcove1:

Just tried to install steam on my new Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon) installation and it won't work at all. I get an error message "Couldn't set up Steam data - please contact technical support" . I thin tried the steps offered by Chap-Un-Duang to no avail. Very disappointed. Steam worked well my on old Mint 17.3 installation on the same computer. Can anyone help?

I have this exactly same problem. Just updated to Mint 18 and now Steam won't work. Get same 'Steam data' comment. It seems the command lines given above won't work because the files are in a different place, although I'm not sure how to change the command to fit Mint. Now I'm worried about updating my HTPC. Don't want to bork my Steam install. :(

[F1L1P]

Delete .steam folder in your home directory, go to .local folder and delete Steam folder. Launch Steam.

[ZekThePenguin]

Originally posted by nada:

Delete .steam folder in your home directory, go to .local folder and delete Steam folder. Launch Steam.

I just tried that. Unfortunately that didn't solve the issue.

[starswater]

I am having this exact same issue since updating to Linux Mint 18 64-bit, and none of the fixes mentioned here have worked for me thus far.

[ZekThePenguin]

I'm noping either a Steam patch or a Mint update will fix the issue.

[qcove1]

Still no resolution for this problem. Very disappointed with Steam tech support which has been close to nonexistent and totally useless.

[y__]

Got the same problem when upgrading from Linux Mint 17.1 to 18
Fixed it by changing the video driver used.
By default Mint18 is configured to use the open source xserver-xorg-video-nouveau driver.

In Menu/Administration/Drivers Manager, I changed it to the recommended one (nvidia-361 in my case) and rebooted.
After reboot, the screen remained black with only the mouse pointer visible for a few minutes, probably self configuring something but it went back to normal by itself then.

I'm now able to launch Steam.
Hope that can help someone.

[Silicon Vampire]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/