I am running Linux Mint Debian Edition with an AMD Radeon 7970 and I tried to install steam and when it made me a desktop icon I clicked on it, and nothing happened. I entered steam in the terminal and got this " $ steam
Running Steam on linuxmint 2 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1433441724)
libGL error: unable to load driver: radeonsi_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: radeonsi
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast"
What should I do? I am a total Linux noob and don't know what I should do to fix this. I believe I need to install radeonsi drivers but I don't know how.

You need to enable multiarch support and load the 32-bit OpenGL drivers for your card.

Follow this guide:
https://wiki.debian.org/Steam

I would like to stay away from the AMD Catalyst drivers if possible and use the open source drivers.

Good idea
(I think)

EDIT: Make sure you also have the firmware-linux-nonfree package to enable 3D acceleration for your card.
https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo

Now it's saying
"$ steam
Running Steam on linuxmint 2 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0_client"
and just stays like that

I don't know, it must be an LMDE issue.

I have just got Steam running on my pure Debian jessie AMD laptop (with the non-proprietary AMD drivers) using:
No other commands were needed (the libgl1-mesa-dri package is a dependency of steam).

Wtf, I did what you said and installed those drivers and then restarted, got past the grub menu and instead of starting up normally I just get stuck on a black screen with the loading cursor (the spinning wheel thing) -_-

Oh dear, sorry...

I wasn't giving instructions, I was just pointing out what works for Debian jessie to illustrate my theory that your difficulties are Mint-related.

I should have been much clearer.

Can you switch to a TTY?

Do you have any xorg configuration files?

Please post the exact commands that you entered.

EDIT: I see you have started a new thread for this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...04#post5381004

You installed the xserver-xorg-video-ati package -- did you in fact have the non-free ATI (fglrx) driver running beforehand?

Post the output of:

All I did was run "# sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri:i386" and "# sudo apt-get install firmware-linux-nonfree libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-video-ati" and then rebooted and now I can't get past the black screen. Where/how do I enter the "apt-cache policy fglrx" you told me to enter? I told you I'm a huge noob haha, and btw this os is almost stock all I installed was Deluge, Steam, and ran those commands.

I would like to stay away from anything with the AMD logo on it. Just as a quick comparison, my 1GB Radeon HD 5450 (PassMark score of 216) performs like a 64MB nVIDIA Geforce 4 440 Go (PassMark score of 5) under Linux (regardless of whether or not I'm using the Catalyst Omega). Pretty craptastic. So far the solution seems to be in the form of a nVIDIA GTX 750 ti. Especially with the newer cards, nVIDIA supposedly has great support for Linux. I intend to find out exactly how true that is.

You can get nVIDIA cards dirt cheap if you know what you need and know where to look.

So your solution to my black screen is to buy a new GPU? ok.

I typed in apt-cache policy fglrx and it said none

In which case I have no idea why your system is doing that.

I am really sorry but it seems I have wrecked your Mint install

I can only apologise -- I have never used Mint but I honestly thought that LMDE2 was basically Debian jessie with some Mint themes and GUI tools.

Clearly I was very wrong about this.

Perhaps some forum members who do use Mint (LMDE) will chime in with something useful...

Well I appreciate you trying but it's all good you almost got Steam working until I got this random black screen, I installed Mint the day you started assisting me so it was pretty much a fresh install so it's not a big deal. Thanks anyways!