Calibre gives broken dependencies when installing [solved]

[dbyentzen]

I tried installing Calibre with Synaptic and recieved a " could not apply changes! Fix broken packages first." message. I then tried a dry-run install in the terminal and got an error saying the missing package was calibre-bin. I returned to Synaptic and tried the Calibre install with adding calibre-bin. I received another error messaging "could not mark all packages for installation or upgrade---calibre-bin depends on qtbase-abi-5-5-1".  I cannot find "qtbase-abi-5-5-1".

I know Calibre installs on Ubuntu(Unity) 16.04 without problems. Can anyone help with this?

Thanks

[AJSlye]

This should fix the broken packages issue:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get upgrade

After this Calibre should install normally.

[dbyentzen]

This should fix the broken packages issue:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get upgrade

After this Calibre should install normally.

I issued these commands and reattempted with same results. I tried "sudo apt install calibre" in the terminal and it returned the following:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
calibre : Depends: calibre-bin (>= 2.55.0+dfsg-1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages



Any other ideas/assistance would be appreciated.

[AJSlye]

Another option would be to try using aptitude instead of aptget. Aptitude is more intelligent than apt-get and can handle downgrading or removal conflicting packages for you, but it will also make a series of recommendations based on different working scenarios for you to chose from.

Code:

aptitude install calibre

[dbyentzen]

Another option would be to try using aptitude instead of aptget. Aptitude is more intelligent than apt-get and can handle downgrading or removal conflicting packages for you, but it will also make a series of recommendations based on different working scenarios for you to chose from.

Code:

aptitude install calibre

I installed and tried aptitude with no luck---I asked it to "try harder" twice:

david@david-Inspiron-660s:~$ sudo aptitude install calibre
[sudo] password for david:  
The following NEW packages will be installed:
 calibre calibre-bin{ab} fonts-mathjax{a} libjs-mathjax{a} libjs-sphinxdoc{a} libpodofo0.9.3{a} libtidy-0.99-0{a} python-apsw{a}  
 python-bs4{a} python-cherrypy3{a} python-cssselect{a} python-cssutils{a} python-dateutil{a} python-feedparser{a} python-html5lib{a}  
 python-libxml2{a} python-lxml{a} python-markdown{a} python-mechanize{a} python-pil{a} python-pygments{a} python-pyparsing{a}  
 python-pyqt5{a} python-pyqt5.qtsvg{a} python-pyqt5.qtwebkit{a} python-repoze.lru{a} python-routes{a} python-sip{a} python-utidylib{a}  
 python-webob{a}  
0 packages upgraded, 30 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 37.4 MB of archives. After unpacking 152 MB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
calibre-bin : Depends: qtbase-abi-5-5-1 which is a virtual package, provided by:
                        - libqt5core5a, but 5.7.0+dfsg-1+16.04+build5 is installed.                         - libqt5core5a, but 5.7.0+dfsg-1
+16.04+build5 is installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

    Keep the following packages at their current version:
1)     calibre [Not Installed]                             
2)     calibre-bin [Not Installed]                         



Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]


I don't *need* Calibre but I do need a ebook reader able to handle different formats. Do you know of Lucidor or another ebook reader?

 

[AJSlye]

Calibre doesn't recommend using distribution packages, they provide their own binary installer:
https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

[dbyentzen]

Calibre doesn't recommend using distribution packages, they provide their own binary installer:
https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux

 I was just at Calibre's site and looking at installing the binary. Doesn't this add an Ubuntu "multiverse" source? I try to keep this and ppas to a minimum. But I need an ebook manager so its this or Lucidor. 

Thanks for all your help, AJSlye--I'll mark this thread solved.

 

[AJSlye]

No, they have a distribution independent binary installer that also includes private versions of all its dependencies.
In other words, it doesn't matter what versions of QT, python, etc. are installed on the host system as it uses it's own private versions of these. The application as well as all of it's dependencies are downloaded in a tar.gz file that is installed (extracted and setup) under /opt/calibre.
   
It basically works in much the same way as a windows installer would.