@shmerl gave very good examples. Just wanted to share a few of my own experience. I've been installing linux to people around me like crazy in the last few years. A few hundreds personally and more on indirectly via the guides I wrote. Almost all of them are double booting Mint (or rarely Manjaro) with Windows.

While integrated GPUs are not recommended for gaming, they worked better on Linux than they do on Windows. Note that I am not talking generally, I am just sharing what I've observed.

Most browser add-ons (extensions?) work as expected on Linux as they work on any other OS. I only came across a few with a warning that they won't work on Linux but I couldn't remember which ones right now. All I know that all of the extensions I need work flawlessly on Linux.

I came across this and thought it worth a share:

"How to Make Linux Mint Look Like Windows 7:"

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/make-linux-mint-look-like-windows-7

I think it is kind of genius, but many linux people are horrified ;)

Have never even considered that extensions may not work on Linux. All the extensions I use work perfectly on Linux, just like they did on Windows back when I still dual-booted.

Turning to software upgrades in general, this is much easier than on Windows. On Linux you basically never have to restart due to upgrades. Kernel and GPU drivers, but I've not had to restart for anything else. So comfortable compared with the slow AF and restart 4 times process with hefty Windows updates. Always a pain at work, when Windows decides to update and restart in the middle of important and time sensitive tasks.

Thank you @shmerl and @Engerek01 for the replies/clarification.

I'm having big problems trying to install Wine 5.0 on Linux Mint 19.2. Tried for hours yesterday, with excellent help from shmerl, but eventually gave up. Today I found another recipe with another backport PPA, but it still failed with the same error message as yesterday. Have you come across this dependency issues, and know how we can get around it?


This is the article I came across today: https://itsfoss.com/wine-5-release/


The error I run into, which seems to ultimately come down to libsdl or libfaudio0 is:
------------------
sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-devel
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:
winehq-devel : Depends: wine-devel (= 5.0.0~bionic)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Hi!
Just get libfaudio0 from here:

[url=https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/i386/libfaudio0_19.07-0~bionic_i386.deb][/url]

[url=https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine:/Debian/xUbuntu_18.04/amd64/libfaudio0_19.07-0~bionic_amd64.deb][/url]

Install it, then follow the instructions here:
https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

It should work for you.

Thanks for the links. It worked fine to install the amd64 version, but not i386. I get an error about libsdl2. But i386 architecture is added, so that shouldn't be it.

In some of the installation recipes I've tried I have also added that repository, but still it fails to install. The whole thing is rather strange, and I'm starting to wonder if my distro is messed up in some way.

In any case, this is a very frustrating issue that I hope will be properly fixed once Linux Mint 20 is out.

Fuck me in the arse. This is doing my head in.

DAYS later for such a tiny shitty problem, I've tried 20 solutions posted here, there and everywhere. None work. None. All are different. None work.

All this does is make me want to install Windows. It's shitty too, but at least the damn shit works.

Now I'm just fed up and want to blow out my brains.

Don't think I have any held packages, at least that I know about doing myself. This error message seems default for some reason, as it's the same that is quoted in article after article and guide after guide about this issue. It's just that none of the solutions work for me, so I'm at my wit's end by now. This process is what has always been bottomlessly frustrating about Linux. Face a problem, search for solutions. Find 20 different solutions. Try them all. None work. *wallbash*

Tried installing libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 from Synaptic Package Manager now, but it fails there too, with the same brief message about broken packages or dependencies. When I try to fix broken packages (from edit), I get this message in a popup box:

E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
E: Unable to correct dependencies

Not terribly helpful. But I've been far down that chain in terminal many times over without really getting anywhere. Nothing is able to be installed due to dependencies that go on for ever.

When I unmarked that libsdl package and fix broken packages, there is a message in the bottom of the program that reads "Successfully fixed dependency problems."

Yet the issue persists. Looks like something is borked with Linux Mint (or Ubuntu) itself, and perhaps there is also another strange problem on my distro, since none of the guides online work. But it's impossible for me to know what is wrong. It requires a knowledge that I simply do not have.

I should also add the rather important "show-stopper" down the chain, when APT tries to uninstall cinnamon across the board. Rarely a good idea.

For example:
sudo apt-get install libpulse0:i386

The following packages will be REMOVED:
cinnamon cinnamon-control-center cinnamon-control-center-dbg cinnamon-dbg
cinnamon-settings-daemon gimp gir1.2-cvc-1.0 gnome-orca
gnome-settings-daemon gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio
gweled libasound2-plugins libcanberra-pulse libcvc-dbg libcvc0 libespeak-ng1
libfaudio0 libfluidsynth1 libgegl-0.3-0 libmikmod3 libpcaudio0
libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulse0 libpulsedsp libsdl-image1.2
libsdl1.2debian libsdl2-2.0-0 mint-meta-cinnamon mint-meta-codecs orca
pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pulseaudio-utils speech-dispatcher
speech-dispatcher-audio-plugins speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng vlc
vlc-plugin-base
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libpulse0:i386
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 39 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Have you done a ppa-purge at some point? The only time I've seen these kinds of messy breakages happen is when a ppa-purge has been done improperly & caused it to gut parts of the system. Anyway, I'd recommend a reinstall rather than attempting to correct that big of a mess.

It looks like some incompatibility on your system between libpulse0 and libpulse0:i386.
What does the following command tell you?

If by ppa-purge you mean removing the ppas from the update manager, then no I haven't tried that. But I don't have many ppas either. Before entering this wine nightmare, which added cybermax-dexter/sdl2-backport as a suggested way around one of the problems, the only PPA I've had is the graphics-drivers one for Nvidia drivers. Nothing else.

As far as I know I don't have any held packages either. At some point I did block chromium from being selected in update manager, since I don't want that filth on my computer, but that is a different thing I think. Some posts I saw on mintforums and such places thought APT was confused, as the held packages error messages seems sort of default. It doesn't seem to be the real problem.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
libpulse0 is already the newest version (1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5).
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:
libpulse0 : Breaks: libpulse0:i386 (!= 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5) but 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.4 is to be installed
libpulse0:i386 : Breaks: libpulse0 (!= 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.4) but 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The bottom there looks very strange. Otherwise it's back to the probably misleading messages about broken held packages.

I am on Linux Mint 19.2 now, which was upgraded from 19.1. The 19.1 was a fresh install. I don't fool around with my system much, because I don't know how. If you think a fresh 19.3 install will help I can try that. Since I have /home on a separate partition, hopefully it won't cause too many issues with games, documents and suchlike.

Here is one of the threads on the mintforums with the same (ish) problem: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=307474&p=1730201&hilit=wine+libpulse+broken+packages#p1730201

One of heaps of threads about the more general wine installation issue: https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/09/how-to-install-wine-staging-development.html

libpulse0 : Breaks: libpulse0:i386 (!= 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5) but 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.4 is to be installed
libpulse0:i386 : Breaks: libpulse0 (!= 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.4) but 1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5 is to be installed

Interesting, some kind of version mix up there.

If your current 64-bit libpulse is :11.1-1ubuntu7.4, try installing 32-bit one like this:


sudo apt install libpulse0:i386=1:11.1-1ubuntu7.4

Or may be try the following:


sudo apt install libpulse0:i386=1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5 libpulse0:amd64=1:11.1-1ubuntu7.5

Cinnamon experts can comment what's the correct version.