I was getting this, too. Joining the Steam Client Beta fixed it.
Make sure both the bootstrapper (steam you installed from the repo) and the client are up to date, these files should exist for you.
@sulix how did you become opted out of the beta client?
I had opted out manually while attempting to fix something else. Everything's working now, though.
Had the same problem and can confirm that upgrading steam worked. If you installed the package locally manually, e.g. through dpkg --install, you have to install the new version again: http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb
I had the latest version of steam launcher and client (updated both today) and was in the beta, according to the Settings dialog. I encountered this problem trying to launch Half-Life.
Symlinking ~/.steam/sdk32/ to ~/.steam/bin32/ has worked around the issue and the game now launches.
steamclient.dllx1 2013-01
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: Game update: AppID 70 "Half-Life (Beta)", ProcID 18336, IP 0.0.0.0:0
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: ERROR: ld.so: object 'gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: Using breakpad crash handler
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: dlopen failed trying to load:
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: /home/daniel/.steam/sdk32/steamclient.so
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: with error:
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: /home/daniel/.steam/sdk32/steamclient.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; Sys_LoadModule failed to load: /home/daniel/.steam/sdk32/steamclient.so
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; unable to locate a running instance of Steam, or a local steamclient.dll.
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: Failed to initalize authentication interface. Exiting...
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: Missing shutdown function for FileSystem_Init(basedir, (void *)filesystemFactory) : FileSystem_Shutdown()
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: Missing shutdown function for Sys_InitArgv( OrigCmd ) : Sys_ShutdownArgv()
Jan 24 21:51:21 Hailey steam[7708]: Game removed: AppID 70 "Half-Life (Beta)", ProcID 18336
Jan 24 21:51:22 Hailey steam[7708]: saving roaming config store to 'sharedconfig.vdf'
Jan 24 21:51:22 Hailey steam[7708]: roaming config store 2 saved successfully
┌─ daniel at Hailey in ~/.local/share/Steam
└─╼ find $XDG_DATA_HOME/Steam/ -name steamclient.so (⌐■■)
/home/daniel/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Half-Life/dedicated/steamclient.so
/home/daniel/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steamclient.so
┌─ daniel at Hailey in ~/.local/share/Steam
└─╼ ls ~/.steam (⌐■■)
bin bin32 bin64 registry.vdf root steam steam.pid steam.pipe