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Recently I did a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04. Then I wanted to install latest vlc (2.2.1), and googled for it. Then I came across this ppa: ppa:mc3man/trusty-media and added it to my repositories by following command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media

Then I issued following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc

But there was an error regarding mesa packages and I again googled for a solution and found that adding ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa would solve the issue. So I used following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc

Now vlc installed successfully. Then I upgraded my system:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

After that I removed above two ppas from the system

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:mc3man/trusty-media
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Now when I can not install some softwares or upgrades. For example, if I do apt-get purge vlc && apt-get install vlc I get some dependency problem. Also I got some dependency problem when tried to install inkscape add ons through Software Center.

So how can I revert my Ubuntu system to packages provided by ubuntu repositories only?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE 1

Purged the 2 ppas along with downgrading ppa provided packages. Still sudo apt-get install vlc gives Dependency error.

UPDATE 2

Executed:aptitude install vlc. There found that the problem was with vlc-data. So executed following commands to install vlc successfully.

apt-get purge vlc-data
apt-get install vlc
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  • It's always recommended to use software from the official repositories. If Ubuntu ships with package-3.x and the latest is package-4.x it probably means that some important libraries/dependencies need to keep in certain version for certain packages to work. Only add third-party repositories if the software you want is not available in the official Ubuntu sources. Jan 18, 2016 at 14:49
  • @Eduardo Cola: Thank you for your suggestion. I usually use apps from official repositories. But latest vlc provided some new features that current official version didn't and for trying it, I installed the ppa version. But now in light of problems faced, I think sticking to official version was better.
    – nlern
    Jan 18, 2016 at 14:56
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    I found this link on Ask Ubuntu. There was an answer that using ppa-purge packages can be downgraded. I have installed the package. Now I added the 2 ppas mentioned in question again and issued command to purge one of the ppas. Checking the progress.
    – nlern
    Jan 18, 2016 at 15:05
  • Removed the 2 ppas using ppa-purge. Still sudo apt-get install vlc reports dependency problem
    – nlern
    Jan 18, 2016 at 16:25

1 Answer 1

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Follow below steps to solve the problem.

1) Install ppa-purge.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

2) Add again the ppas, to revert ppa provided packages to official ones

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media

3) Purge the ppas and revert ppa provided packages to official ones by ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo ppa-purge ppa:mc3man/trusty-media

4) Use aptitude install package_name to check if there is any dependency conflict. If there is then go through the aptitude provided dependency resolution options one by one and apply suitable changes.

5) Some dependency arises because the installing package depends on old libraries. In this case symlinking updates libraries to old ones or downgrading solves the problem.

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