I've been trying to install gnome-tweaks on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS install but to no avail.

Running sudo apt install gnome-tweaks gives the following output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies: gnome-tweaks : Depends: gnome-shell-extension-prefs but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

If I then try to resolve the dependency issue by installing gnome-shell-extension-prefs I get the following error:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies: gnome-shell-extension-prefs : Depends: gnome-shell (= 3.36.1-5ubuntu1) but 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 is to be installed Depends: gnome-shell-common (= 3.36.1-5ubuntu1) but 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Furthermore, Running apt-cache policy gnome-shell-extensions gnome-tweak-tool gnome-shell gives the following output:

gnome-shell-extensions: Installed: (none) Candidate: 3.36.1-1 Version table: 3.36.1-1 500 500 focal/universe amd64 Packages 500 focal/universe i386 Packages
gnome-tweak-tool: Installed: (none) Candidate: 3.34.0-2ubuntu1 Version table: 3.34.0-2ubuntu1 500 500 focal/universe amd64 Packages 500 focal/universe i386 Packages
gnome-shell: Installed: 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 Candidate: 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 Version table: *** 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 500 500 focal-updates/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2 500 500 focal-security/main amd64 Packages 3.36.1-5ubuntu1 500 500 focal/main amd64 Packages 500 focal/main amd64 Packages

With my basic knowledge, it seems like a versioning conflict. I've searched far and wide but no solution and seems there are a significant number of people facing this issue. Any help to resolve this will be highly appreciated.

3

2 Answers

I met the same problem when I tried to install gnome-tweak-tool on the lates Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (downloaded from Ubuntu official site on 19th November 2021).

The reason this happens is that one of the dependencies gnome-shell-extension-prefs requires gnome-shell (= 3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2) but 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 was installed by default.

To solve it I downgraded gnome-shell and its dependencies to the previous version with the following code:

sudo apt install gnome-shell=3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2 gnome-shell-common=3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2 gnome-shell-extension-prefs=3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2

References

• @aqh's answer
• How downgrade gnome-shell in 18.04?

1

I've had this specific problem (I am also a beginner in Linux) with the same package, gnome-tweaks, in Ubuntu 20.04.3.

Personally, I've worked around this issue by downgrading gnome-shell from version 3.36.4 (installed by default in this Ubuntu version) to version 3.36.1 in the synaptic package manager (sudo apt install synaptic as it's not installed by default).

This is possibly because gnome-tweaks has only been updated for gnome 3.36.1 instead of version 3.36.4 found on Ubuntu 20.04.3.

3

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