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gimp installation issues

When installing gimp on Debian based systems you might encounter a dependency tangle i.e. a package conflict between different versions of ODBC libraries (libodbc2 vs libodbc1, and libodbcinst2 vs odbcinst1debian2) — probably due to mixing packages from different repositories or a partial upgrade.

How to fix

Thankfully there are a few steps we can perform to resolve this.

Check for broken packages

The following command will check for any packages in a bad state (half installed).

dpkg -l | grep ^..r
This command is doing two things connected by a pipe (`|`):

  1. dpkg -l - This lists all packages in the Debian package management system. The -l flag stands for "list" and shows information about each package including its status, name, version, and description.

  2. grep ^..r - This filters the output of the first command. Let's unpack this grep pattern:

    • ^ matches the beginning of a line
    • . is a wildcard that matches any single character
    • ..r means "match any two characters followed by 'r'" at the beginning of a line

In the dpkg -l output, the first few characters of each line represent the package status. Specifically, the first three characters indicate:

  • 1st character: desired package state (i=install, r=remove, p=purge, h=hold)
  • 2nd character: current package state (n=not-installed, i=installed, etc.)
  • 3rd character: error flags (space=no error, r=reinst-required, etc.)

So grep ^..r is looking for packages where the third character is 'r', which means packages that are marked as "reinst-required" - packages that need to be reinstalled because they're in a broken state.

This command is essentially finding all packages in your system that need to be reinstalled due to some error or corruption.

Force install the conflicting packages

The new packages are trying to replace files that are owned by the older packages so we need to force the installation.

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/libodbc2_2.3.11-2+deb12u1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/unixodbc-common_2.3.11-2+deb12u1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/libodbcinst2_2.3.11-2+deb12u1_amd64.deb

This will tell dpkg to overwrite the conflicting files from the broken packages:

(Reading database ... 353499 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libodbc2_2.3.11-2+deb12u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libodbc2:amd64 (2.3.11-2+deb12u1) ...
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
dpkg: warning: trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libodbc.so.2.0.0', which is also in package libodbc1:amd64 2.3.11-3
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
dpkg: warning: trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libodbc.so.2', which is also in package libodbc1:amd64 2.3.11-3
Setting up libodbc2:amd64 (2.3.11-2+deb12u1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.36-9+deb12u10) ...
(Reading database ... 353502 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../unixodbc-common_2.3.11-2+deb12u1_all.deb ...
Unpacking unixodbc-common (2.3.11-2+deb12u1) ...
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
dpkg: warning: trying to overwrite '/etc/odbc.ini', which is also in package odbcinst 2.3.11-3
Setting up unixodbc-common (2.3.11-2+deb12u1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-2) ...
(Reading database ... 353507 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libodbcinst2_2.3.11-2+deb12u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libodbcinst2:amd64 (2.3.11-2+deb12u1) ...
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
dpkg: warning: trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libodbcinst.so.2.0.0', which is also in package odbcinst1debian2:amd64 2.3.11-3
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
dpkg: warning: trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libodbcinst.so.2', which is also in package odbcinst1debian2:amd64 2.3.11-3
Setting up libodbcinst2:amd64 (2.3.11-2+deb12u1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.36-9+deb12u10) ...

Fix and clean up

When all the conflicts have been resolved we need to finish the setup:

sudo apt --fix-broken install

Install gimp

Finally we should be able to install gimp app without any issues:

sudo apt install gimp

Finishing up

You should now have gimp working and I highly recommend something like LibreOffice Draw which comes pre-installed in MX Linux (my current distro of choice based on Debian 12) and equally good is draw.io both make great companions to gimp.

Now go get creative!

Lookout for a future write up on the basics of gimp it can be a bit daunting at first hopefully I will help you get started in the right direction :-)