Failed Firmware for Linux Kernel Update

Question

I'm a bit new to this, while updating the firmware for Linux kernel drivers (1.79.14) I encountered the following problem:

installArchives() failed: (Reading database ... 
(Reading database ... 5%%
(Reading database ... 10%%
(Reading database ... 15%%
(Reading database ... 20%%
(Reading database ... 25%%
(Reading database ... 30%%
(Reading database ... 35%%
(Reading database ... 40%%
(Reading database ... 45%%
(Reading database ... 50%%
(Reading database ... 55%%
(Reading database ... 60%%
(Reading database ... 65%%
(Reading database ... 70%%
(Reading database ... 75%%
(Reading database ... 80%%
(Reading database ... 85%%
(Reading database ... 90%%
(Reading database ... 95%%
(Reading database ... 100%%
(Reading database ... 193788 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace linux-firmware 1.79.1 (using .../linux-firmware_1.79.14_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement linux-firmware ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-firmware_1.79.14_all.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/lib/firmware/ar3k/AthrBT_0x31010000.dfu', which is also in package bt-dw1705-firmware 0.1
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-firmware_1.79.14_all.deb
Error in function: 
SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I've already tried solution that was posted for this question but the same problem still exists. (Ubuntu 12.04)

Answer 1

The cause

The reason why you get this error message is that the package bt-dw1705-firmware provides a firmware file that the linux-firmware package wants to overwrite or update.

The package management mechanisms of Linux operating systems are designed to prevent different packages from overwriting each others files and leave the system in an inconsistent state. That is why you get this error.

Solution

The bt-dw1705-firmware doesn't seem to be a Ubuntu package and therefore is probably not supported or maintained anymore, while linux-firmware clearly is.

You should remove bt-dw1705-firmware either with sudo apt-get remove bt-dw1705-firmware or if that doesn't work with sudo dpkg --remove bt-dw1705-firmware and run sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-firmware afterwards.

Alternatively you could use sudo dpkg --force-overwrite linux-firmware according to this answer. But this will probably cause the issue to re-appear as soon as linux-firmware is updated again.

The answer was approved by the OP, so it's safe to assume that the firmware file in linux-firmware works, no matter which solution you pick.