Launching Steam on a system where the discrete GPU is an AMD RX 9070 (Navi 48 / RDNA 4) causes steamwebhelper to crash-loop indefinitely. The main window briefly appears
then closes, only the tray icon persists, and the journal shows steamwebhelper restarting roughly every 10 seconds (startcount increments forever). Counted ~40 restart attempts
over 2 hours.
Forcing Steam to render its UI on the integrated GPU (via PRIME / removing PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true from the .desktop) makes the UI work normally, which strongly points at CEF
GPU-process initialization failing on this card.
Workaround (for others hitting this)
Edit ~/.local/share/applications/steam.desktop (copy of the system file) to:
Add -no-cef-sandbox to all Exec= lines
Remove PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true and X-KDE-RunOnDiscreteGpu=true
Use per-game launch options DRI_PRIME=1 %command% to keep games on the dGPU.
-no-cef-sandbox alone is not sufficient — the dGPU path still crashes; the iGPU path is required for the UI.
Reproduction
System with both AMD RX 9070 (dGPU) and Ryzen 9000-series iGPU (Granite Ridge).
Install Steam from the official Debian/Ubuntu steam-launcher package.
Launch via the start-menu entry (which sets PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true).
Observe: brief Steam window flashes, tray icon appears, main UI never shows. journalctl --user shows steamwebhelper repeatedly restarting.
cef_log.txt shows browser + utility processes start, then the same pattern repeats every ~10s with new PIDs — no GPU process is ever logged. Will attach cef_log.txt and the
relevant bootstrap_log.txt segment.
Summary
Launching Steam on a system where the discrete GPU is an AMD RX 9070 (Navi 48 / RDNA 4) causes
steamwebhelperto crash-loop indefinitely. The main window briefly appearsthen closes, only the tray icon persists, and the journal shows steamwebhelper restarting roughly every 10 seconds (
startcountincrements forever). Counted ~40 restart attemptsover 2 hours.
Forcing Steam to render its UI on the integrated GPU (via PRIME / removing
PrefersNonDefaultGPU=truefrom the .desktop) makes the UI work normally, which strongly points at CEFGPU-process initialization failing on this card.
Workaround (for others hitting this)
~/.local/share/applications/steam.desktop(copy of the system file) to:-no-cef-sandboxto allExec=linesPrefersNonDefaultGPU=trueandX-KDE-RunOnDiscreteGpu=trueDRI_PRIME=1 %command%to keep games on the dGPU.-no-cef-sandboxalone is not sufficient — the dGPU path still crashes; the iGPU path is required for the UI.Reproduction
steam-launcherpackage.PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true).journalctl --usershows steamwebhelper repeatedly restarting.System info
AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, gfx1201, LLVM 20.1.2, DRM 3.61, 6.14.0-37-generic)Logs
cef_log.txtshows browser + utility processes start, then the same pattern repeats every ~10s with new PIDs — no GPU process is ever logged. Will attachcef_log.txtand therelevant
bootstrap_log.txtsegment.cef_log.txt
console-linux.txt
bootstrap_log.txt