I use Ubuntu 12.04 but this may be true for other Linux flavors.
Installation of Steam and TF2 was pretty smooth, except for the fact I'd installed my nvidia drivers from Nvidia's website (the .run file) and not from Ubuntu's package manager. This caused the dreaded "can't load steamui.so" error for me. (it couldn't find libGL.so.1) When I installed TF2 and tried to run it, I then got the dreaded "glColorMaskIndexedEXT not found" error. After wasting maybe 2-3 hours on these errors it finally dawned on me that I might have two conflicting versions of nvidia drivers installed. I removed the ones from the .run file and then everything just worked.
I've noticed that some of the error messages in steam Linux have recommended solutions. This "issue report" is just to recommend adding a message to let people know that conflicting graphics card drivers may be one of the causes of said errors. It'll save users a lot of headaches just to see it and think "oh yeah, I installed those other drivers ages ago!"
Checking specifically for driver incompatibilities is outside the scope of steam-for-linux, but I agree that the error message given to the user could be more helpful.
I use Ubuntu 12.04 but this may be true for other Linux flavors.
Installation of Steam and TF2 was pretty smooth, except for the fact I'd installed my nvidia drivers from Nvidia's website (the .run file) and not from Ubuntu's package manager. This caused the dreaded "can't load steamui.so" error for me. (it couldn't find libGL.so.1) When I installed TF2 and tried to run it, I then got the dreaded "glColorMaskIndexedEXT not found" error. After wasting maybe 2-3 hours on these errors it finally dawned on me that I might have two conflicting versions of nvidia drivers installed. I removed the ones from the .run file and then everything just worked.
I've noticed that some of the error messages in steam Linux have recommended solutions. This "issue report" is just to recommend adding a message to let people know that conflicting graphics card drivers may be one of the causes of said errors. It'll save users a lot of headaches just to see it and think "oh yeah, I installed those other drivers ages ago!"