I have tried removing all local content from ~/.steam and ~/install and reinstall, it works until the actual application needs to start, after the login screen, same for running as root user.
my steam version is:
steam.i686 1.0.0.22-2.fc18

$ steam
Running Steam on fedora 18 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
Looks like steam didn't shutdown cleanly, scheduling immediate update check
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
unlinked 0 orphaned pipes
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 3565 with name 0eBlobRegistryMutex_766631BD1CD1BB4911E524F80BEABA73
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 3565 with name 0eBlobRegistrySignal_766631BD1CD1BB4911E524F80BEABA73
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 3565 with name 0emSteamEngineInstance
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 3565 with name 0eSteamEngineLock

(steam:3679): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita",
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:989: error: unexpected identifier `direction', expected character `}'
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "pk-gtk-module"
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
[0209/192650:WARNING:proxy_service.cc(646)] PAC support disabled because there is no system implementation
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360379549_client)
/home/myuser/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 561:  3679 Segmentation fault      (core dumped) $STEAM_DEBUGGER "$STEAMROOT/$PLATFORM/$STEAMEXE" "$@"