Apt wants to remove Opera on Xubuntu 18.04

sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer

The developers will have to check if they are compatible with the new version of curl and update the dependencies. Apparently Opera is saying it requires curl3, which has been replaced in 18.04 by curl4.

thevisitors

thevisitors @sgunhouse

@sgunhouse That is the problem. Opera wants libcurl3 which technically can be installed but that would screw up so many other programs it seems pointless to even install Opera. Everything else I have installed depends on libcurl4

A Former User @sgunhouse

@sgunhouse Quoting Brian Murray at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/curl/+bug/1754294 referring to the problem of libcurl4 on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
"None of the packages which you are having an issue with are from the official Ubuntu archive, then there is nothing we (the developers of Ubuntu) can do about this. You'll need to take up the issue with the people who develop these packages. "
I made a very heavy and sarcastic remark.
Unfortunately the developers of Opera now have one more problem that is to incorporate the code of libcurl in the browser code itself to avoid problems like this and will even resolve dependency conflicts also in other versions of Ubuntu and other distributions of GNU / Linux .
If you thought it was just Microsoft and Apple making arbitrary decisions without consulting the other developer companies .....

A Former User @sgunhouse

@sgunhouse Greetings buddy! What I can do is to suggest to the folks that just as I am using Ubuntu Bionic Beaver to do the following:
Using the Ubuntu Package Search page on internet find the libcurl3 and libcurl4 packages for bionic and download them.
Create a tmp folder inside the folder where the files are (typically the Downloads folder) and move these files (.deb) to it.
Open a terminal and go to this folder. Assuming the user name is a username for example, the terminal usually opens in this folder and in this example I would type "cd / Downloads / tmp" (without quote).
In this particular case I have two files which are:
libcurl3_7.58.0-2ubuntu2_amd64.deb
libcurl4_7.58.0-2ubuntu2_amd64.deb
To ensure this, simply type "ls" and press ENTER.
Type dpkg-deb -R libcurl3 * .deb tmp
Another tmp folder was created inside this one and inside this one we have another folder called DEBIAN and within it some files.
Using the Leafpad application or another text editor of your choice open file namen "control" and look for the terms conflict and replace. Delete the name of the file that is listed as conflicting or replace.
Save the file and exit the editor.
Returning to the terminal having been modified type "dpkg-deb -b tmp fixed3.deb".
This will generate a file called fixed3.deb which is libcurl3 without the conflict information.
Do the same with libcurl4 using the same commands replacing "3" with "4" and at the end you will have two fixed files.
Now on the terminal type "sudo dpkg -i --force-all fixed * .deb"
This will dpkg install the two modified files. The --force-all option is required because both of them modify content in the same location and it was for this reason that I discovered that libcurl3 in the latest version has a library called libcur4.so, that is, it already has support only that they have decided to make a new one package that in addition conflicts with the previous one and causes all this headache.
But even having done so we are still in danger.
The apt command will still want to update these two files as they are installed from the local disk and not from the repository, even though it is the same version.
We need to lock these packages so they are not updated.
Still on the terminal type "sudo apt-mark hold libcurl3 libcurl4" and press ENTER.
Then type 'echo "libcurl3 hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections' and hit ENTER and then type 'echo "libcurl4 hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections' and hit ENTER again.
Now the packages are locked and even if you run "sudo apt update" and they appear as upgradeable, typing "sudo apt upgrade" will get the message that they will be kept.
Having made a workaround we now hope to see what exit the developers of Opera will give us.
I prefer that they incorporate this code into a file that comes with the browser.
We can even name this file as brianmurray to honor our "dear" curl developer who said "it's not our problem".

A Former User

I can't install Opera 50 in Ubuntu Budgie 16.04.3. Can the earlier version of Opera be installed? Which version?

sgunhouse

sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer @Guest

@naseeb Please don't steal other people's unrelated topics. If you find a related topic you can post there, but this thread is not about 16.04 or installing. If you can't find a related topic then start a new one. And include all relevant details.

A Former User @sgunhouse

@sgunhouse I have unpacked the Opera Developer deb package and edited its control file to make Opera Developer depends from libcurl4 OR libcurl3, giving preference to libcurl4. For now, Opera Developer is working as before. I've noticed no issues yet and downloads are working fine.

A Former User

Is this going to be fixed soon? I cannot install steam-client, transmission-remote-gtk and other software because of this issue.

A Former User

You are asking your question in the wrong forum. Neither opera, nor steam or transmission-remote-gtk is to blame for the premature adoption of a lib from your distro.
However, opera and steam are both closed source apps, which means that someone else than the distro maintainers has to make a patch to make it work with that lib.

Fyi, debian (= the distro ubuntu is based on), has libcurl4 in its experimental repo., which means they still consider it unstable/unsuitable for general usage, but the ubuntu maintainers decided not only to have it in their main one for 18.04, but to build all the apps that depend on it, with it, thus making it essential part of the os. Go figure why...

A Former User @Guest

@jimunderscorep The reason why I asked here was because of response "None of the packages which you are having an issue with are ones from the official Ubuntu archive, subsequently there is nothing we (the developers of Ubuntu) can do about this. You'll need to take up the issue with the people who develop these packages." here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/curl/+bug/1754294 All applications which needed libcurl4 work fine except Opera, that and that response made me "blame" Opera. I just moved from Chrome but I am moving back because if it just does not work, then I am not gonna stick around whatever is the reason.

A Former User

Leaving opera aside, where do you get the other packages (virtualbox, slack-desktop and transmission-remote-gtk) from? Do they come from a third party repo as well?
Because if they come from the main one, they should already be built with libcurl4...
They are right about the fact that opera should now be built with libcurl4 support.

---edit
I would really love to see a reaction or a comment from those 14.04 users who complained a few weeks ago when opera 51 moved to a newer version of libdbus saying that opera devs are bad for making the change and that opera will lose users that way...

l33t4opera

l33t4opera @Guest

Hi guys, @furret29, this seems to be fixed in OPD 53.0.2900.0: "DNA-68233 [Linux] Opera browser will not install on Ubuntu 18.04, Bionic".

A Former User @l33t4opera

@l33t4opera Thank you.

A Former User

The change seems to be backported in today's opera-stable 52

$ apt-cache depends opera-stable | grep libcurl
 |Depends: libcurl3
  Depends: libcurl4