I can confirm this. Though, instead of modifying my session, I just tried running "steam -bigpicture". I also get issues when attempting to start steam with big picture mode as default using the config menu setting. Big picture works fine if started from the web interface of steam. I can only assume that the steam web client is starting a daemon beforehand, or something.
The issue appears to be with pulse audio. Says "access denied", attempting to simply run steam as root results in "connection refused". I'm running xbmcbuntu (frodo) (It's my goal to get steam to launch from xbmc directly into big picture for the "Ultimate media center").
I can run steam in big picture mode as a custom x session, but I used a lightDM .desktop file, not a .xsession for the user. There are several other issues.
I am not able to reproduce this. If you are seeing this can you post your system information. The one crash dump ID @glenkim posted looked like some heap memory corruption. I have seen some similar crashes on machines with AMD drivers.
I'm experiencing the error on Fedora 17, on an Intel 3570k using the Intel HD Graphics 4000. However, I only experience this error when I try to load steam directly from an .xsession script. Changing my X session to Gnome and then starting Steam via shell or desktop shortcut in big picture mode works just fine.
closing due to lack of any ability to repro or get more data.
Sorry I haven't responded here - I don't have a lot of free time to test, but I'm still intending to get you your system info and a repro when I have a few minutes. The bug should stay closed and inactive until then.
https://github.com/thor27/steam-login has given me more success on XBMCbuntu, it actually works without crashing; though when you launch it from the DM, it goes to wallpaper, but you alt+tab and everything works fine &_&
I have a separate user that execs steam in an .xsession file. When I login to the user, steam attempts to start, but then crashes.
Steps to reproduce:
cat > ~/.xsession <<ENDL
!/bin/bash
start-pulseaudio-x11
exec steam
ENDL
chmod a+x .xsession
3. Login with the created user, with the custom/user session option in the login manager (might require OS configuration to enable)
stderr output: