Hi

I want to install a deb package but when I try to install it reports missing dependencies.

The current libc6 version on my system is 2.11.1-Oubuntu7.12 but the package requires version >=2.17

If this is possible please could someone give my a few hints?

Ubuntu 10.04 desktop has probably reached End Of Life meaning it is not supported anymore and that is probably why you can't install the newer version. You could, if you really had to, either find the new location for the 10.04 repositories and adjust your sources list accordingly or manually find each package that is required and install each package one at a time until you have finished witht eh installation of the package you wanted in the first place.

It would be more realistic for you to download a supported version of Ubuntu (12.04 desktop is supported for 5 years from its release date till about April 2017) and install what you want on it.

Yes, if you tell which package you want to install.


"libc6" is your OS ( together with the kernel )
.. and can not be changed.


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Thanks both thats exactly what I expected. But I thought I'd ask in case I was missing something.

I will have to take the plunge in the near future and upgrade to 12.04.

You can do a dist-upgrade from one LTS version of Ubuntu to the next. So you can upgrade directly from 10.04 to 12.04 since both are LTS versions. See this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseUpgrades

I would recommend doing a clean install of 12.04 though. I always do clean installs of Ubuntu and I never have problems.
Also, if you want to stay with the LTS versions of Ubuntu, I would recommend avoiding all of those unsupported PPA repos that so many people get themselves into trouble with.
If you really want long term stability, stick with the standard Ubuntu repos for the best results.