Noob Questions

[eldonkr]

Still here in case anybody has any advice.

[Moebius]

why go through all the poking about when I could just do step 3 and fix it?

Because it is the proper way to do it and may also give you a heads-up as to what the issue was in the first place. This may help later if the problem reappears. If it is installed correctly then there is no need to reinstall and we look elsewhere for the issue.

I just did an update and it uninstalled Pidgin. I tried using Add/Remove to get it back, but it tells me to use Synaptics, but I can't get it to install again using Synaptics either.

Also, I just noticed that the update also uninstalled Transmission and won't let me reinstall that either. What kind of update takes out two of my most used programs?

More than likely a library file of sorts that may have a compatibility issue with the ones used by Pidgin and Transmission - hence in order to install whatever it was in the update, it had to remove Pidgin and Transmission. It would have told you that before you told it to proceed. If you are like most people, you probably hit the update button without even noticing what was going to be removed. You must be careful with all updates. Ideally, the best thing to do would be to avoid updates all together unless you are having some kind of issue.

Now when you say Pidgin and Transmission will not reinstall again through Synaptic - what error message are you getting? What point do you reach?
I know its a pain, but give us as much information as you can. What you may think is useless info may well be the info we need to help you.

[eldonkr]

I don't remember the exact error messages, but when I went into synaptics it would tell me that it needed other things to be installed for it to work properly but it wasn't going to install them unless I told it to and then it would stop.

So I'd tell it to install the things it was dependent on but it would then tell me that those two packages were dependent upon the program I wanted to install and it wouldn't install them unless I installed the original program first I.E. Pidgin/Transmission.

It would go thus:

"Synaptics knows you want to install Pidgin/Transmission but it needs Thing A and Thing B, but we won't install those unless you tell us to."

And then I'd go to mark Thing A or B for installation and it would tell me:

"I can't install this without Pidgin/Transmission."

Not in those exact words of course.

[eldonkr]

Anyone out there who can help? I can't get those programs installed back on and they won't and my the programs I'm using in place of them aren't working.

[DarkChild]

If you running x64 of 2.3, use the link below to get Firefox 3.5.5. Its a deb file that I've uploaded for easy installation + is comes with adobe flash pre-installed!!

http://forumubuntusoftware.info/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=4224&p=46705&hilit=firefox#p46705

If it won't cause any big problem, it would be good idea to do a clean installation and start from scratch.

[eldonkr]

I've got the firefox problems solved. I need to know how I can get back GIMP, Transmission, and Pidgin. I've got an update that looks like it's going to put Pidgin back. I'll try to install the other programs again and grab a screenshot of the error message that it throws up when I try to install them.

[eldonkr]

I just did the update and it didn't bring back any of the programs. I went into synaptics and tried to install pidgin, I took screen shots of the error messages displayed.

[DarkChild]

Go to the provided link below and search for the different applications that you want and install them. The site does automatic installation so it should build the dependency list for the different apps!!


http://www.getdeb.net/updates/ubuntu/9.10/

[eldonkr]

Yeah, I just tried that. I installed pidgin from getdeb, it won't let me install it in the update manager.

Is there a way that I can just roll back the last two updates or something? This laptop was working perfectly fine before those two updates.

[eldonkr]

Why does my machine keep eating itself?