Ubuntu Mate 15.10, Nvidia & Steam

Support & Help Requests
#1

So, I am having an issue with Steam not successfully running a game. I have a fresh install of 15.10 and this is the first time I have attempt to play games on Steam in Linux. I have an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 in my machine. Here is what I have done so far:
Installed the Nvidia ppa (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa) based upon a thread I found out there on the webs and then installed Nvidia 358 (sudo apt-get install nvidia-358 nvidia-settings). I then downloaded the Steam .dep package from the Steam site and installed, the install ran smooth. Launched the Steam client and then downloaded Insurgency and started the game. The game started and I was able to join a server, but the actual game never started after the map was downloaded, I believe it froze. I then minimized the game window and happened to notice an OpenGL error.
I researched all over and tried many steps. At some point during my troubleshooting I broke something because now Steam doesn’t launch at all. I’ve tried everything from removing Steam and the Nvidia driver and reinstalling everything and even upgraded the driver to 361. The error I am getting when I attempt to launch Steam from the terminal is the following:

Running Steam on ubuntu 15.10 64-bit
_STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1454620878)
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

I have found this error online on multiple occasions and have attempted some of the troubleshooting steps but have not found a solution yet. I believe this to be a driver issue and I’m not sure how to fix it.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

#2

Trie this solution ! Here <–

#3

Thank you.
Yes, that is one of the thread I had found and tried that did not work for me.

#4

Have you tried installing the driver through the additional hardware control panel? I have the GTX 960 and installed that driver. I haven’t had any issues.

#5

@ChasingLogic
And after you were able to run Steam games?
Installing the Nvidia driver isn’t really the issue, at least the installation from the repos. Its running Steam games thereafter (and now Steam altogether since it is no longer launching) that seems to be the major issue.

#6

Yeah I can play my full steam library with no problems.

The swrast error that your seeing is directly related to not being able to detect your graphics driver that’s why I suggested to try and remove your ppa driver and use the official ‘ubuntu’ one with additional hardware. I’ve also had luck with xorg-edgers in the past but I haven’t needed it for my 960.

#7

Cool. Thanks. I will work on that over the weekend.

#8

So I removed and purged the Nvidia driver that was installed and selected 361.28 from the Additional Drivers section. After the reboot, I then removed and purged Steam and deleted the hidden directories in my home directory, then downloaded the .deb package from Steam’s site and installed it. I am still getting the same error message from terminal:

[ ed@edmate15: ~ ]$ steam
Repairing installation, linking /home/ed/.steam/steam to /home/ed/.local/share/Steam
Running Steam on ubuntu 15.10 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1454620878)
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

#9

Trie this fixes from arch wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam#Troubleshooting