Since nvidia 535.x and new Steam GUI windows might not spawn and you have trouble using it. Here are ways to solve this:
$ steam -vgui
launches Steam with partly old UI. Should work, but can’t use friends network and if opening game properties webview will crash and reset.
$ steam --reset
redownloads the steam runtime. Need to relogin. At least some Preferences are lost (compatibility / Proton for games, Settings like GPU acceleration). The new UI might launch though, at least until you restart your PC or restart steam. (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Troubleshooting#Steam_window_does_not_show_on_Nvidia_GPUs_after_the_June_14,_2023_update)
(Edit: This worked just once)
$ __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=0 steam
There should be almost no downside to this, prob some small performance loss. Source: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/steam-for-linux-client-not-showing-ui-with-535-43-02-245/256178/9
In this thread this also was mentioned:
$ steam -no-cef-sandbox
but this sounds unsafe. I suggest this only as the very last resort.
If you found a working solution, you can make an alias, e. g.:
alias steam='steam -vgui'
Alternatively, just install the flatpak. Since the flatpak package brings it’s own runtime packages, it just works.
Yeah flatpak packages bring their own runtime packages so they’re more independent of the underlying system. I installed the steam flatpak now and it works just fine