I need help running steam on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

When I click on Steam I get this error:

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

I am getting the same error as this person. Here is a link to question:

Steam cannot set up steam data

I then tried the top answer provided in the link above and show what I encountered below, but first I am going to show you the error I get when I try to run steam in the terminal.

Here is error encountered in the terminal when I try run steam in terminal.

johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$ steam
Repairing installation, linking /home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam to /home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam 
rm: cannot remove '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam': Is a directory   
Setting up Steam content in /home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam
rm: cannot remove '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam': Is a directory
johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$

Here is the top answer I talked about earlier that was in the link provided above:

Then I try what @Denilson Sá Maia (it was his idea for another person facing the same error) said to do and nothing happens. Here is link: Steam cannot set up steam data

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

When I did it in terminal:

johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$ mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
mv: cannot move '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam/appcache' to '/home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam/appcache': Directory not empty
mv: cannot move '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam/userdata' to '/home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam/userdata': Directory not empty
johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$ rmdir ~/.steam/steam
rmdir: failed to remove '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam': Directory not empty
johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$ ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$ rm -rf ~/.steam/bin

Here is a history of the commands I used.

• 1 nm-tool
• 2 sudo lshw -C network
• 3 nm-tool
• 4 lsb_release
• 5 lsb_release -a
• 6 $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
• 7 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
• 8 sudo apt-get install wine1.7 winetricks
• 9 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
• 10 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wine-1.7.7/ppa
• 11 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
• 12 cd desktop
• 13 cd DESKTOP
• 14 sudo dpkg -i wine-1.7.7.deb
• 15 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
• 16 sudo apt-get update
• 17 sudo apt-get install wine1.7 winetricks
• 18 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
• 19 sudo apt-get install ca-certificates
• 20 apt-cache policy nvidia-current
• 21 sudo nvidia-xconfig
• 22 sudo apt-get install steam
• 23 run sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
• 24 sudo apt-get install gdebi-core
• 25 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
• 26 sudo apt-get update
• 27 sudo apt-get install nvidia-367
• 28 steam steam://run/325610
• 29 run wine
• 30 sudo run wine
• 31 chmod +x /usr/bin/winetricks
• 32 sh winetricks
• 33 sh winetricks
• 34 su
• 35 mv winetricks /usr/bin/
• 36 wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks
• 37 wine "c:\program files\steam\steam.exe"
• 38 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 39 rmdir ~/.steam/steam
• 40 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 41 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 42 run steam
• 43 $ mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 44 cd ~
• 45 rm -rf .steam
• 46 cd ~
• 47 rm -rf .steam
• 48 cd ~
• 49 rm -rf .steam
• 50 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 51 rmdir ~/.steam/steam
• 52 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 53 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 54 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 55 rmdir ~/.steam/steam
• 56 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 57 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 58 History 50
• 59 history 10
• 60 history 40
• 61 MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.3 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=430 %command%
• 62 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 63 rmdir ~/.steam/steam
• 64 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 65 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 66 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 68 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 69 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 70 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 71 rmdir ~/.steam/steam
• 72 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 73 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 74 steam steam
• 75 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 76 rmdir ~/.steam/steam
• 77 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 78 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 79 steam steam
• 80 history 10
• 81 history 50
• 82 steam steam://run/325610
• 83 mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
• 85 ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam
• 86 rm -rf ~/.steam/bin
• 87 history 70
• 88 history 1000

Answer 1

Note that I am not a Steam user, so all the commands below have not been tested. They should work, based on what you wrote in your question, but I cannot guarantee it.

Here's the core of the issue:

johnwawryk@SteamMachine:~$ mv ~/.steam/steam/* ~/.local/share/Steam/
mv: cannot move '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam/appcache' to '/home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam/appcache': Directory not empty
mv: cannot move '/home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam/userdata' to '/home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam/userdata': Directory not empty

You are getting these two errors because both directories exist:

• /home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam/appcache
• /home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam/appcache

Same for the userdata directory:

• /home/johnwawryk/.steam/steam/userdata
• /home/johnwawryk/.local/share/Steam/userdata

Problem is, I have no idea which directories contains valuable data, and which can be deleted.

I suppose userdata contains saved games? Just in case, here are commands to save the contents of both directories in tar files:

tar -cf ~/old-steam-userdata.tar ~/.steam/steam/userdata
tar -cf ~/new-steam-userdata.tar ~/.local/share/Steam/userdata

Once the tar files have been created in your Home directory (you can check their content with the file explorer), remove the old directories:

rm -Rf ~/.steam/steam

And then you need to run this command again:

ln -s ../.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam