Problem installing vim

Question

I tried installing VIM using terminal command sudo apt-get install vim but it didn't installed and it showed the following message:

You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:  flashplugin-installer   : Breaks: flashplugin-downloader (< 11.1.102.55ubuntu3) but  
11.0.1.152ubuntu1 is to be installed
vim : Depends: vim-common (= 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.1) but 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2 is to be installed  
      Depends: vim-runtime (= 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.1) but it is not going to be installed

E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install'  with no packages (or specify a solution).

Even if I try using apt-get -f to install, it didn't work. Please provide a proper solution for this.

Answer 1

What I see there is that the flashplugin-installer package had some kind of downloading or installing problem and it is not letting you install vim. What I suggest is remove the flashplugin package, then do a refresh of the repository cache and then download vim. Afterwards just install flash again, although I recommend doing it via the restricted extras. Something like the following:

1. sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-installer

2. sudo apt-get update

3. sudo apt-get install vim

4. sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

On another note I actually still recommend using aptitude over apt-get. Or even synaptic to solve in an easy matter several conflicting problems between packages.

Answer 2

I would like to combine both of ur answers. Type it one by one:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove vim-common
sudo apt-get install vim

Answer 3

probably answering this too late. but try uninstalling vim-common too. I was facing a similar problem with the error message

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 vim : Depends: vim-common (= 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2) but 2:7.3.429-2ubuntu2.1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I was able to solve it by uninstalling vim-common package first.

sudo apt-get remove vim-common

After that i was able to install it with no problems.