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I am on Xubuntu 14.04. I don't understand the cause of the following warning message I get.

  1. When I check only the Universe repository, Software Updater tells me that my system is up to date.

  2. When I check the following repositories in Software Updater:

    • Main
    • Universe
    • Restricted

    I get a list of package to update. Up to now, everything is sound.

  3. Now, if I check only the following repositories:

    • Main
    • Restricted

    I get the message "Not all updates can be installed".

    If I click Continue, I get a list of packages to update but a number of them are unchecked and cannot be selected:

    • Complete Generic Linux kernel and headers
    • Generic Linux kernel headers
    • Generic Linux kernel image
    • GTK+ graphical user interface library
    • Programs for the GTK+ graphical user interface library

Can it be that these packages are in the Universe repository and that I get the warning because I did not check this repository? But then, how comes I am not offered to upgrade them when I check just Universe?

I did a sudo apt-get install -f and it says:

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 44 not upgraded

How can I make sense of this behavior? I know I could just check all three repositories: Main, Restricted and Universe, and just proceed to update; but I would like to get a deeper understanding.

PS: I have 'Important security updates' and 'Recommended updates' checked and I did not check any of the Other Software repositories.

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  • Try running sudo apt-get upgrade and see if that tells you anything. You apparently have 44 packages that need updating.
    – TheWanderer
    Oct 5, 2015 at 0:20
  • @Zacharee1: Thanks for the reply. Running sudo apt-get upgrade I get in particular: The following packages have been kept back: libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin linux-generic-lts-utopic linux-headers-generic-lts-utopic linux-image-generic-lts-utopic And it says that 30 packages will be upgraded and 5 won't.
    – The Quark
    Oct 5, 2015 at 0:51
  • Upgrade the 30. The weird thing is those held-back packages are for 14.10. Are you sure you're on 14.04?
    – TheWanderer
    Oct 5, 2015 at 0:54
  • I ran lsb_release -a and it says 14.04.3 LTS. I am now upgrading the 30 packages....
    – The Quark
    Oct 5, 2015 at 1:02
  • That's very strange. Let me know how it turns out!
    – TheWanderer
    Oct 5, 2015 at 1:03

1 Answer 1

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So after some research, here is what I understood.

About the Utopic packages in my 14.04.3 Trusty Thar release

According to the Release Note for Trusty Tahr, if one instals Ubuntu directly from the 14.04.2 media (which I did) one automatically receives a newer hardware enablement stack by default. This is maybe why I have the packages: linux-generic-lts-utopic, linux-headers-generic-lts-utopic and linux-image-generic-lts-utopic.

Although I am not 100% sure since (i) the Trusty Tahr Release Note mostly refer to the vivd-based packages, and (ii) I had essentially just some documentation files referring to 'utopic' under /etc/share. So still a bit of a mystery...

About the "held back" packages

The explanation can be found here. These are upgrades of packages that have new dependencies that require the installation of new packages. To prevent the automatic installation of such new packages (not just upgrades) that could potentially put the system at risk, the upgrades are held back.

The command to force the installation of these held back upgrades along with their required dependencies is:

apt-get dist-upgrade

I used the command and everything went fine.

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