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I just tried launching Steam after a long period of inactivity. At first I tried launching Steam by clicking the icon in the program menu, resulting in nothing happening at all. I've never had an issue with this before. I then tried typing steam in terminal, which returns the following message:

~$ steam
Couldn't import apt, please install python3-apt or update steamdeps for your distribution.
steam.sh[396141]: Running Steam on ubuntu 20.04 64-bit
steam.sh[396141]: STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
setup.sh[396216]: Steam runtime environment up-to-date!
steam.sh[396141]: Steam client's requirements are satisfied
max open descriptors set to 9216

I tried installing python3-apt, but apt returns it is already installed. I am unable to find any package called steamdeps, and I can find no useful info on how to update them. I've tried reinstalling (sudo apt reinstall steam) and uninstalling and installing (sudo apt remove steam steam-launcher and sudo apt reinstall steam) Steam again, but I get the same error. I'm at a loss of what to do. Any ideas what is causing this issue, and how to resolve it?

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    python3-apt, python3-aptdaemon, and python3-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets are the three packages you might need.
    – ubfan1
    Aug 5, 2022 at 21:16
  • I'm not sure exactly why this error was thrown. However, I found this comment suggesting it may have to do with the graphics driver. I did switch to the most recent driver, without any change in error output. However, I then tried restarting the computer, which did the trick. (This also updated the BIOS, though I don't think this is relevant here.) I can only assume it has something to do with certain updates that needed a reboot to be put in effect. Aug 6, 2022 at 16:25
  • I still do not know what exactly caused the error to be thrown, however. Aug 6, 2022 at 16:28

2 Answers 2

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As mentioned in a comment above, you could try:

sudo apt-get install python3-apt python3-aptdaemon python3-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets

However, I have found this answer to be pretty reliable for making steam work again: Steam UI not launching after upgrading from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04

This is a long chain of commands but seems to always work for me:

sudo apt remove steam steam-launcher steam-installer
sudo apt purge steam steam-launcher steam-installer

sudo rm -rf ~/.local/share/steam
sudo rm -rf ~/.steam
sudo rm ~/.steampath
sudo rm ~/.steamid
sudo rm -rf Steam
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/steam
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

sudo apt update
sudo apt install wget gdebi-core libgl1-mesa-glx:i386

wget -O ~/steam.deb http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb

sudo gdebi ~/steam.deb
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Per https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9442#issuecomment-1532237772, I expect that the error output is irrelevant to the underlying issue.

Considering that this issue might be somewhat complex due to the absence of useful error messages, more logs are probably necessary to commence diagnosis. An issue tracker would be a superior forum for this kind of problem due to the conversational format rather than the Q&A approach of here.

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    How is this an answer?
    – David
    May 3, 2023 at 8:19
  • @David, for me to answer your question, you'll need to specify why you ask that. May 4, 2023 at 19:01

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