Unable to install wine32

I think I put my system into a bad state while trying to install the latest wine. I followed the directions here: https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

However I made the mistake of upgrading before uninstalling the version of wine from the standard repo. Or at least I'm guessing that's what got me into trouble. Now I can't install either version. I removed the winehq repo and tried to install the old version but it failed. Well, I can install 64-bit wine, but when I try to install wine32 it fails.

sudo apt-get install wine32
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:
 wine32:i386 : Depends: libwine:i386 (= 3.0-1ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

sudo apt-get install libwine:i386
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:
 libwine:i386 : Depends: libpulse0:i386 (>= 0.99.1) but it is not going to be installed
                Recommends: libasound2-plugins:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

apt search libpulse0
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
libpulse0/now 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5 amd64 [installed,local]
  PulseAudio client libraries

If I try to install libpulse0:i386 it tells me it has to uninstall 286 packages, many of which are key parts of the system.

Looking here: https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#How_do_I...nstall_Wine.3F
It looks like this is describing exactly my situation. So I've gotten this far, but where it says "The solution is to either change the installed version of the library back to the one from the standard repository so you can install both the 32 and 64 bit packages, or find an i386 package whose version exactly matches the one already installed."
This is where I'm stuck. How do I do this?

Here follows my wine lecture:

Libraries are not promiscuous. You need 32bit libs for 32bit wine and 64bit wine needs 64bit libs. Wine works by translating window system calls to Posix ones; so instead of mscvrt.dll, it's /lib/ld.so, etc. But if /lib/ld.so is 64bit, and your program is 32bit (as most windows software is), then you're in <insert your expletive of choice>.

On slackware you can build a true multilib system. It uses /lib, & /usr/lib for 32bit libs.Then we have /lib64, & /usr/lib64 for 64bit ones. So you can have /lib/ld.so (32bit), and /lib64/ld.so (64bit) and a specially compiled 32/64 bit wine, and everything is happy in it's nappy.

How you do it in Ubuntu, I do not know. They are saying: "The solution is - do the impossible." A 32bit Ubuntu OS? (that should work if you badly want wine32)? A slackware VM? A windows VM?

Originally Posted by business_kid They are saying: "The solution is - do the impossible."

I don't think that's the case at all. It was working before, but I got some of my library versions out of synch apparently. I just need to get that fixed and I expect to be able to make it work again.

From the same link the OP posted:

Ubuntu's implementation of Multiarch is still incomplete, so for now you can't simply install 32-bit and 64-bit libraries alongside each other. If you're on a 64-bit system, you'll have to create an isolated environment for installing and building with 32-bit dependencies. See Building Biarch Wine On Ubuntu for detailed instructions for Ubuntu using LXC, and Building Wine for general information.

Ubuntu is its own "beast" and you should not expect previous versions to work the same as future ones as Canonical decides in the end what stays and what goes. They likely removed something which complicated this..

Ubuntu's implementation of Multiarch is still incomplete … … See Building Biarch Wine On Ubuntu for detailed instructions for Ubuntu using LXC, and Building Wine for general information.

Let's simplify this to the one lib I mentioned, /lib/ld.so or as it is now, /lib/ld-linux.so. Right now, it points at a 64bit lib. For wine to work, that has to be a 32bit. If the instructions don't do it, ask yourself do you need wine64? because if you don't a 32bit distro beckons.

Originally Posted by business_kid For wine to work, that has to be a 32bit.

32-bit wine was working fine before I messed things up. I just need to revert some packages to their default versions that apparently got out of synch due to my clumsy attempts to upgrade wine.

I didn't think it would be difficult to get assistance with this. I thought it would be simple. But it looks like help is not forthcoming. So at this point it looks like the fastest solution will be to reinstall the OS. So I'm off to do that. Thanks anyway, everyone.