Unfortunately, X11 authentication via XAUTHORITY (typically using ~/.Xauthority) relies on the hostname remaining the same: entries in the Xauthority file are keyed by the hostname. This is not Steam's design decision, it's a lower-level thing.
Some X11 display managers, such as GNOME's gdm, configure the X11 display to accept any connection from the same uid using the equivalent of the command xhost +si:localuser:$(id -un), but some display managers don't do that. That command might work around this.
In principle Steam could do that itself, but I think it would be inappropriate for Steam to be altering your security policy, particularly in order to work around a rare issue.
Nothing extracted yet.
Your system information
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
If one changes their host name via
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname {{new_hostname}}and then goes to install and run Steam without restarting, Steam fails to launch properly.Steam will take 5-10 minutes to launch, and if the GUI does manage to appear, it will fail to respond anyway.
Steps for reproducing this issue:
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname {{something}}to change the hosts name.Specs:
Logs
Notice how my host name is
seth-pc-tux, but Steam "cannot connect to non-local host"seth-pcwhich was the old name.Workaround
Restarting the PC resolves the issue.