Terminal cannot install anything

Question

I hav been using Ubuntu for quite sum time. yesterday i accidentally deleted the ubuntu partition (from windows) and again installed it. im having the following problems I tried 2 install Google chrome using deb file(through PPA) It had dependency errors so i ran

sudo apt-get install -f

it deletd chrome. i again ran

sudo dpkg -i <filename>.deb

it again had dependency problems. i again ran

sudo apt-get install -f

it again deleted chrome

I also cannot install gksu or anything. when i try to install respiratory using

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu vivid main universe

it says command 'deb' is not recognised.

It was not like this before. only after i installed Ubuntu this time, these things are happening. What 2 do? Should i delete and install Ubuntu again???

Answer 1

Install the missing dependencies first, otherwise dpkg and apt-get will get into a race condition in which the first will install a package without the needed dependencies and the second will remove it in order to fix the broken dependencies problem:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libappindicator1 libcurl3

Then install Google Chrome:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_xxxxx.deb

Answer 2

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu vivid main universe

This is not a command which is meant for execution, but it is a valid entry for your sources.list located at /etc/apt/sources.list - you can also create a subconfig like /etc/apt/sources.list.d/abcxyz.list After you added it there a apt-get update should make the packages out of this source available. Please note, that at some repositories you need to add a key to your trustring, so that Ubuntu recognizes it as trusted repository (also see this askubuntu post)

For your problem with Chrome we need first the exact location where you downloaded it (URL would be best) and the exact error message. Normally you should get the newest version from Google. Please note, that you select the correct architecture (the command uname -a can help you here).

Also consider using gdebi (out of the package gdebi-core) for installation of *.deb packages at the commandline, because it resolves dependencies before installation so you don't run into trouble with apt-get -f install.