wine: Depends wine1.6 or wine1.8 but it is not going to be installed, you have held broken packages

Question

I want to install wine on Ubuntu 16.04, but I am getting errors:

$ sudo apt-get install wine
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:
 wine : Depends: wine1.6 or
                 wine1.8 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Also tried this:

$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

I followed the answers to Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages and ran the following command.

dpkg --get-selections | grep hold

But there was no output.

After that I also tried dpkg --get-selections to see all the packages. There were some with "deinstall" so I ran the following:

$ dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall
ca-certificates-mono            deinstall
libevent-2.0-5:amd64            deinstall
libgdata2.1-cil                 deinstall
libglib2.0-cil                  deinstall
libgtk2.0-cil                   deinstall
libmx-1.0-2:amd64               deinstall
libnewtonsoft-json5.0-cil       deinstall
mono-runtime-common             deinstall
nvidia-304                      deinstall
nvidia-opencl-icd-304           deinstall
tlp                             deinstall
tlp-rdw                         deinstall
transmission-gtk                deinstall
xserver-xorg-legacy             deinstall

But these packages cannot be uninstalled. I have also tried answers given to How do I resolve unmet dependencies after adding a PPA? and this one but it has not resolved anything.

I have also tried using Aptitude, but the problem is still the same.

I also tried with Synaptic package manager. it is also unable to resolve the dependencies.

I have also tried the following commands:

sudo aptitude -f install wine
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get update
dpkg --get-selections | grep hold
dpkg --get-selections
dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo aptitude -f install wine
sudo apt-get -f install wine

But none of them fixed it.

What else can I try?

Solution

I am using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (64-bit) and encountered the same error, "E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages." while trying to install mysql-workbench.

I solved the problem by doing the following:

1. sudo apt autoremove (remove packages that are no longer needed)
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get install package-name (e.g. wine, mysql-workbench, etc.)

Hope it works for you.

Comments

[AzkerM]

What happens when you try sudo apt-get install -f? Post the output of it instead of pictures.

[theoneabhinav]

@AzkerM have updated the answer . it is giving me same output on dist-upgrade as well.

[AzkerM]

Is this only for wine package or for everything? Can you try sudo apt-get update and then refer to this post

[theoneabhinav]

It is giving me same results for all. I am unable to install even .deb packages. Have gone through that page as well. But it won't work as nothing is installing or updating.

[theoneabhinav]

i tried this . but it still doesn't work. its giving me the same output as before.