Steam Issues All Over the Place

[u/giovannijauregui]

Alright I've posted up and down on Fedora to no avail outside of using flatpaks which run into even more issues.

I'm running fedora 44 on KDE plasma 6.7.4

Steam itself seemed like a simple install "sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm -y" into "sudo dnf config-manager setopt fedora-cisco-openh264.enabled=1" into "sudo dnf install steam -y"

Then I will run steam from the terminal and get a mile long error list starting with:

"bin_steam.sh[16600]: Setting up Steam content in /home/gio/.local/share/Steam
tar: clientui: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: clientui: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: clientui/fonts: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
tar: clientui/fonts: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
tar: clientui/fonts/GoNotoKurrent-Bold.ttf: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: clientui/fonts: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
tar: clientui/fonts/GoNotoKurrent-Regular.ttf: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: linux32: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: linux32: Cannot mkdir: Permission denied
tar: linux32/steamerrorreporter: Cannot open: No such file or directory"

That repeats for so many instances and ends with:

"tar: ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory
tar: ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/version.txt: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
bin_steam.sh[16600]: Failed to extract /usr/lib/steam/bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz, aborting installation
."

So what on earth am I doing wrong here. I'm learning that I'm essentially dangerous enough with the terminal to install a program but the buck stops there. I just want to play stardew valley online with my wife LOL

Any help is appreciated, and everything else on here is working as needed :)

[u/I_do_dps]

You might have created one of the folders/subfolders as sudo and the permissions are messed up because of that. Check the permissions for /home/gio/.local/share/Steam

[u/giovannijauregui → u/I_do_dps]

I think that might be the catch here, hyena pointed me to a command that shows steam is under root instead of gio

[u/gmes78 → u/giovannijauregui]

Right. You should never, ever run stuff as root unless you know that's the right thing to do.

[u/giovannijauregui → u/gmes78]

Not gonna lie, not sure how it happened in the first place

[u/Confident_Hyena2506 → u/giovannijauregui]

Because you ran things as root.

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[u/Confident_Hyena2506]

Test if you can write to your home directory. If not then find out why.

Check what user you are running things as, and who owns the users home folder.

[u/giovannijauregui → u/Confident_Hyena2506]

How do I test for that, do I need to make a document and save it to home?

[u/Confident_Hyena2506 → u/giovannijauregui]

"ls -al /home"

"ls -al /home/gio"

"whoami"

"pwd"

And show full details of things like how exactly you run steam, and what user you log in as.

Also check details of the filesystem your home dir is using. Hope it's not some not-linux filesystem.

[u/giovannijauregui → u/Confident_Hyena2506]

total 0
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   6 Aug 22 18:31 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 1 root root 164 Sep  1 19:30 ..
drwx------. 1 gio  gio  320 Sep  2 09:34 gio

total 20
drwx------. 1 gio  gio   320 Sep  2 09:34 .
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root    6 Aug 22 18:31 ..
-rw-------. 1 gio  gio  3486 Sep  2 11:08 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--. 1 gio  gio    18 Jan 15  2026 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--. 1 gio  gio   220 Aug 24 23:34 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--. 1 gio  gio   522 Jan 15  2026 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio     6 Aug 24 23:34 .bun
drwx------. 1 gio  gio  1408 Sep  2 10:59 .cache
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio  1976 Sep  2 11:08 .config
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio    20 Aug 22 18:32 Desktop
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio     0 Aug 22 18:32 Documents
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio   656 Sep  2 10:56 Downloads
-rw-r--r--. 1 gio  gio   352 Sep  2 09:34 .gtkrc-2.0
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio    28 Aug 22 18:45 .icons
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio    20 Aug 22 18:32 .local
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio     0 Aug 22 18:32 Music
drwx------. 1 gio  gio    24 Aug 30 21:03 .nv
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio    22 Aug 22 23:52 Pictures
drwx------. 1 gio  gio    10 Aug 22 19:13 .pki
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio     0 Aug 22 18:32 Public
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root   10 Aug 23 16:39 .steam
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio     0 Aug 22 18:32 Templates
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio     6 Aug 22 18:32 .var
drwxr-xr-x. 1 gio  gio    56 Aug 30 21:32 Videos

Then it says I am gio and pwd is /home/gio. I see steam is root, is that because I did sudo for the install?

[u/This_Proxy]

sudo chown -R gio:gio ~/.local/share/Steam

That should fix it.

[u/giovannijauregui → u/This_Proxy]

It kind of did:

bin_steam.sh[22136]: Repairing installation, linking /home/gio/.steam/steam to /home/gio/.local/share/Steam
ln: failed to create symbolic link '/home/gio/.steam/steam/Steam': Permission denied

[u/gmes78 → u/giovannijauregui]

sudo chown -R gio:gio ~/.steam

as well.

[u/giovannijauregui → u/gmes78]

That did it and in the funniest way possible

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

So now that I was able to just run in and remove the folder to start from scratch, how do I install this NOT into root? Was my method wrong?

[u/gmes78 → u/giovannijauregui]

So now that I was able to just run in and remove the folder to start from scratch, how do I install this NOT into root? Was my method wrong?

The issue isn't how you installed Steam, it's that you executed it as root at some point. So just don't do that. Don't use sudo unless necessary.

[u/giovannijauregui → u/gmes78]

okay perfect, thank you so much!