I am using fedora 44 KDE.
I installed steam via dnf and saw that it seemed to be not launching.
Then I pkill-ed it and launch via terminal to see what is going on.
Looks like it is downloading update for first launch but no UI is there for showing the same.
I am not sure why it is not giving that dialog box as it usually shows up.
Should this be documented here?
I installed steam for the first time last week and did not see that issue.
My guess is that it’s an issue with steam network and not the steam code.
I wonder if this will work itself out if retried after a day?
it is working but no initial GUI for download is available. This is unexpected and confusing for non-power users.
After this, steam works fine.
I’m not sure if that is Valve’s Steam code or something RPMfusion packaging added. @leigh123linux likey knows.
Or as you say add to docs.
Probably Valve’s Steam code (or maybe KDE), as I’ve seen this behaviour on CachyOS too.
Unlikely to be KDE code as the RPM can be used on nome as well.
For what it’s worth, this issue has been reported for a long time across different distros, so it’s most likely something on Valve’s side. Maybe some kind of timing issue or perhaps it depends on the type of update being processed.
For me, usually the first boot-up of Steam on a fresh install it does what you’ve described above. Subsequent client updates will pop-up a little progress bar modal to indicate it’s updating… Most of the time. I’m quite sure I’ve caught it updating without a modal popping up on existing installs as well.
There’s an issue for this on their GitHub page: Steam client updates silently causing very long apparent launch times · Issue #12980 · ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux · GitHub
