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I have recently moved over from SteamOS which is Debian Wheazy. None of the other fixes have not worked, I tried getting steam both through Steam itself and the Ubuntu Center.

Wadih M.
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Kobe Lockwood
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  • what version of ubuntu are you using and what "other fixes" have you tried that did not work and please post the output that lists the missing 32-bit libraries so I can look them up for you. – mchid Mar 29 '15 at 03:24
  • For a fresh install of 14.04.2 - you're using the HWE mesa stack & need to install the ..lts-utopic package(s). So sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic:i386 should prove useful – doug Mar 29 '15 at 04:04
  • the current hwe stack is for vivid now that utopic is eol. – mchid Aug 22 '15 at 18:00

4 Answers4

49

Assuming libc.so.6 is the only one you are missing, open a terminal and execute the following commands to install the missing library (be careful here and do not accept changes unless you are happy with the changes ie may uninstall stuff you want to keep!!):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libc6-i386

Please post any errors.

mchid
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    It's hard to tell whether this would have worked for the OP, but I got the same error from Steam on Debian 8, and installing libc6-i386 worked for me. – Beetle Jul 31 '15 at 11:27
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    E: Unable to locate package libc6-i386 – Zenon Feb 14 '18 at 03:57
  • @Zenon What version of Ubuntu are you using? – mchid Feb 18 '18 at 17:34
  • @mchid Ubuntu MATE 16.04 – Zenon Feb 18 '18 at 17:46
  • @Zenon Some people use mate on older computers. Are you using the i386 version or the X86_64 version of mate ? – mchid Feb 19 '18 at 00:41
  • @mchid The ARM64. Raspberry Pi 3B. If it just doesn’t work on that architecture I wish they’d make it more obvious. I get that the RPi is far from a gaming desktop but Steam has some older games that require very little in the way of specs. – Zenon Feb 19 '18 at 01:19
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    @Zenon My friend told me that steam games are usually available online and that you don't usually need to install steam to play the games (I am not sure myself). Also, how did you install steam? Did you use apt-get? The command would be: sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install steam or sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install steamcmd – mchid Mar 04 '18 at 03:14
  • sudo apt-get install steam did not work on my Ubuntu 18, but sudo apt-get install libc6-i386 helped. – Sklavit Jun 14 '20 at 16:10
8

As of time of this post, using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, I first tried installing using steam_latest.deb from their website, but got the OP error.

To resolve I ran this in terminal:

sudo apt-get install steam

And it would work after.

Wadih M.
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    Not working on my Ubuntu 18. – Sklavit Jun 14 '20 at 16:09
  • @Sklavit Does apt-get find the package at all on Ubuntu 18? In my case Steam was able to function but finally the game I was trying to play only worked on Steam for PC T_T. Can you try sudo apt-get install steamcmd as well? (untested, but I saw it on someone else's response) – Wadih M. Jun 14 '20 at 18:07
  • Linux Mint 19.3 here. This actually worked. Thanks! Apparently, dpkg did not attempt to install the dependencies. Running sudo apt-get install steam right after fixed the issue for me. – JulioHM Jun 20 '20 at 00:36
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    the same problem. 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS – Vasilii Suricov Dec 09 '21 at 10:50
  • I found it necessary to apt-get install steam and also apt-get install steamcmd – fixermark Jan 16 '23 at 05:28
4

If like me, mchid answer didn't solved your issue, try making a symlink to libc.so.6 and reinstalling steam from steamcmd:

find /lib -name libc.so.6
ln -s /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 /lib/libc.so.6
mkdir ~/steamcmd2 && cd $_
wget http://media.steampowered.com/client/steamcmd_linux.tar.gz
tar -xvzf steamcmd_linux.tar.gz
./steamcmd.sh

Then

./steam.sh
KrisWebDev
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0

Install Steam

To install all the missing packages automatically without any 404 errors or missing libc.so.6 or bad ELF.

Enter Software & Updates and uncheck all except the first one: Canonical-supported free and open-source software (main) and close the window.

That's all. Now, after steam is installed and running, you can go Software & Updates and check to the original state.

Benny
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