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I think it went wrong when you followed the instructions in https://electrum.org/#download
The latest version of Electrum available as a package is 1.9.7-1
Electrum 2 is not integrated into Mint at present.
Don't give up!
What you were trying to do was quite ambitious. Some dependencies might not be automatically dragged in as they have pre-dependencies which, if missing, might break a package.
Installing programs from websites you have not got a key for smacks of Windows, it is risky anyway, especially if you run that into your system as root.
I take issue with Windows just works, not if you have an old printer, external device, that no one wants to write a driver for the latest Windows.
well yea the statement "windows just works" is quite wrong of course but it feels that way when iv had many machines using window that i seriously abuse and they keep ticking.
I am as i say desperate to leave windows behind i cant stand their proprietary closed spyware they call an OS but after a lot of time with linux it seems i could do with a masters in computer science before being comfortable with it. (just my feeling).
i never got to figuring taking an image of the OS, that was the next thing on the list , dohh !
But seriously, don't install non-package software - unless its for a very good reason.
Simply getting the latest version is not a good reason.
Remember that downloaded source code will need to be periodically recompiled (by you). apt-get won't supply you with automatic updates...
I suggest you reinstall (it's quick) as this will reset your machine too a "known good" status.
Then install electrum, using apt-get.
If it says you have to install a huge number of packages - especially "server" packages,
ask yourself if you really want to do that.
You apparently tried to install something that conflicted with xorg, so in order to proceed it had to uninstall xorg. I guarantee this threw up a big warning when you were doing the installation. First something along the lines of "The following packages will be removed due to conflicts...", and then a second "Continuing could break dependencies for some packages", and you clicked through both of them. Now all of the errors you're getting are those dependency problems that it almost certainly warned you about.
Some pieces of software for Linux are mutually exclusive. You MUST pay attention when you go to install a package to what the package manager tells you. Both the additional packages that need to be installed due to dependencies, AS WELL AS (and this is the most important part) what packages will be removed if you decide to continue due to conflicts.
I would start by making a list of all of those packages that were installed and removed at 17:02:12 and reverse the process. Remove the packages that were installed and install that huge list of packages that were removed. That might correct the problem, if not I would just reinstall and chalk this up to a lesson learned.
ok thx, yea of course it probably did warn me but everything i install from the terminal says X package will be installed or X dependency will be removed etc etc and i dont know what the hell "libgles2-mesa-lts-utopic" is for example, so if i always stopped at the point of it saying "do you want to continue" i would never install anything or have solved a lot of the problems i have had. I did not try to install anything that was supposed to break the OS (well how can anything apart from malicious intent cause such a mess). I dont know.
I wonder what it was exactly that caused that , it was either the installation of wickr or could have been the vpn i installed (privateinternetaccess.com for linux). neither of which can i see how i was supposed to know this would happen.
well thank you for taking a look , i shall try to reverse the whole mess. Then i shall sit there wondering if i should ever install anything ever again (joking , maybe sorting a partition imaging backup method first).
yea but when it spits out a load of library names i don't know what they are or do. so your saying if on installation of anything via terminal it says its going to remove/replace or update anything i should go google every file its talking about and even then how do i know if its supposed to be removing it or not ?
I shall pay very close attention next time i use apt-get install and see if i can make heads or tails of it.
Thank you for suffering my intolerable ignorance :-/
yea but when it spits out a load of library names i don't know what they are or do. so your saying if on installation of anything via terminal it says its going to remove/replace or update anything i should go google every file its talking about and even then how do i know if its supposed to be removing it or not ?
I shall pay very close attention next time i use apt-get install and see if i can make heads or tails of it.
Thank you for suffering my intolerable ignorance :-/
You're speaking as if everything you install will have a bucket-full of packages that will be installed/removed along with it that you need to research. The vast majority of the packages you install will only install themselves and maybe 1-2 supporting packages who's names will make perfect sense (eg: installing emacs might pull in emacs-x11, and emacs-info along with it). Sometimes something you install will pull in a HUGE set of supporting packages, an example might be the first time you install a KDE application when you don't run KDE (eg: I don't use KDE, but I like the terminal emulator "konsole", as soon as I install konsole on any system it has to pull in the entire host of KDE libraries), that's normal, but you should notice it and make sure it makes sense.
It's rare that anything will be removed, so that alone should be a yellow flag. It's exceedingly rare that a gigantic mass of packages will be removed, as what happened here, so that should raise an entire stock of red flags. When that happens, and it will happen from time to time, your reaction should be "WHOA WHOA WHOA...what is going on here???", do some googling, and find another way to get where you're going.
Just pay attention and you'll get used to what's normal and what's not. Keep regular backups, you WILL break your system occasionally, it's normal and part of the learning process. When it happens, spend some time trying to fix it (it's a great educational experience), if you can't get it going within a reasonable amount of time then reinstall and restore your backup, and chalk it up to a learning experience.
One of the VERY nice things about Linux is that 99.9 of your settings, configurations, customizations, etc. are stored in your user's home directory. This means that when you reinstall, all you have to do is wipe your partition, reinstall your OS, reinstall the programs you need (it helps to keep a list of everything you've installed and how...just a short to-do list of your necessary programs and their respective apt-get installation commands), restore your home directory from your backup, and you will be back up and running literally within the hour, with all of your customizations and settings in-place.
I did exactly that just a few weeks ago as a matter of fact, sitting in a hotel room on another continent. Due to the slow internet at the hotel and the fact that I didn't have the ISO for my OS ready-to-go on a backup drive it took a few hours, but I screwed it up before lunch (system locked up during an update, hard power-off corrupted the filesystem due to XFS's crappy journaling, and I was dead in the water) and was back up and running by dinner.
Last edited by suicidaleggroll; 08-26-2015 at 08:31 PM.
well yea the statement "windows just works" is quite wrong of course but it feels that way when iv had many machines using window that i seriously abuse and they keep ticking.
I am as i say desperate to leave windows behind i cant stand their proprietary closed spyware they call an OS but after a lot of time with linux it seems i could do with a masters in computer science before being comfortable with it. (just my feeling).
i never got to figuring taking an image of the OS, that was the next thing on the list , dohh !
You don't but you need have a real desire not to go back. Pay attention to what the terminal is telling you, if something looks or feels wrong it probably is so stop. If you think you've screwed something do not reboot fix it first, if you don't you'll lose the use of the computer to help you fix it.
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