I made a big mistake: dependency hell in Kubuntu!

[Yosef Meller]

On 23/01/11 22:19, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> In trying to install Digikam 1.7 on Kubuntu 10.10 I got myself into
> dependency hell. I was installing some Natty packages with dpkg. Now I
> cannot even open Konsole, Dolphin, or any other KDE app other that
> what is already open. When I try to "apt-get install -f" in a virtual
> terminal it wants to remove almost everything! Of course, I cannot cut
> and paste from there. Of course, the apt-get database is up to date
> with the proper repos.
>
> Help! I don't know what to do! I tried removing the last packages
> installed as listed in /var/lib/dpkg/info (with a simple ls -la
> command in there), but aptitiude and apt-get both want to remove 200
> packages even when I try to remove just those ten or so.

What I did when it happenned to me during an upgrade: let it remove what 
it wants, then install kubuntu-desktop to get the important stuff. But 
first make sure it leaves you with a network stack, and if not, keep the 
debs of things like gnome network manager on the side, so you can 
install them manually if needed.