Inkscape can't launch in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

How can I download this libgtkmm-2.4.so.1 for Inkscape in Ubuntu 18.04?

inkscape: error while loading shared libraries: libgtkmm-2.4.so.1:   
  cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

How did you installed Inkscape? Try to install missed libgtkmm-2.4.so.1 library with sudo apt install libgtkmm-2.4-1v5. — N0rbert, Jul 14 '18 at 14:06
Hello HExa, welcome to askubuntu! You should remove and reinstall your inkscape. Seems that you have a broken dependency! How did you installed inkscape. If you have further problems try to install inkscape as snap with snap install inkscape — abu_bua, Jul 14 '18 at 14:30
@HExa Please specify how did you installed Inkscape, add output of which inkscape to the question. There is no particular reason to install it as Snap, both DEB and Snap will be 0.92.3. — N0rbert, Jul 14 '18 at 14:40
I installed inkscape by sudo apt-get install inkscape. Ok thanks, I'll these 2 solutions. — HExa, Jul 15 '18 at 14:08

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '18 at 12:29

In my case these commands helped:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libwpg-0.3-3
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libwpd-0.10

I found them thanks post:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1639300

where recommended is the following iteration:

1) Find lacking library

ldd $(which inkscape) | grep "not found"

2) Find package containing this library

3) Install with flag --reinstall.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 17 '18 at 16:18

3

Something is awry with your inkscape installation as indicated by N0rbert in this comment.. The missing library package is listed as a dependency of inkscape and should have been installed when you installed inkscape.

One alternative would be to do exactly as suggested in the comment and issue the command sudo apt install libgtkmm-2.4-1v5 which is exceedingly likely solve this problem but may not address the root cause.

Personally, I would issue the following commands:

sudo apt update to update the package database from the server.

sudo apt install --reinstall inkscape to reinstall the inkscape package.

This results in a running copy of inkscape under Ubuntu 18.04. If you launch it from a terminal rather than the GUI you might notice a warning like "Failed to load canberra-gtk-module" You can either choose to ignore it (inkscape will still launch) or resolve it with sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module

Note: Both of the aforementioned packages require that you enable the universe repository prior to attempting to install.

answered Jul 17 '18 at 16:18

Elder Geek

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This answer doesn't work. All this does is reinstall Inkscape with the same package that was downloaded before. If you're getting this error the solutions that appear to work are the ones you're suggesting shouldn't be done. – Dec 07 '19 at 15:22
@CraigMaloney Pardon my confusion, but what solution do you think I'm suggesting you don't use? – Elder Geek Dec 08 '19 at 03:11
I was referring to sudo apt install libgtkmm-2.4-1v5, which I posted before I tried it in my attempt later in this thread. – Dec 08 '19 at 18:18
@CraigMaloney Oh. Apologies for the confusion. As I attempted to make clear that approach was exceedingly likely to solve the problem but might not depending on the root cause of the issue. – Elder Geek Dec 08 '19 at 21:00

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 24 '19 at 11:30

I could not solve the problem you are facing and that also happens with me but I do manage to use inkscape on Ubuntu 18.04 by issuing

$ sudo apt install snapd
$ sudo snap install inkscape
$ which inkscape
/snap/bin/inkscape

Before that I tried without success

1) reinstall inkscape and gtk from ubuntu 18.04

2) install latest inkscape from dev-ppa

3) LD_LIBRARY_PATH with vmware gtk versions

My system was dist-upgraded from Ubuntu 16.04 so I think this is why it is masked by running ok on a clean 18.04 install. I am seriously considering downgrade to 16.04 as it worked perfectly

Hope the snap solves to you too Cheers

score 0 · Answer 4 · 2019-12-07T15:49:10.483

You might need to reinstall libgtkmm-2.4:

~# apt install --reinstall libgtkmm-2.4
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'libgtkmm-2.4-1v5' for regex 'libgtkmm-2.4'
Note, selecting 'libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a' for regex 'libgtkmm-2.4'
Note, selecting 'libgtkmm-2.4-dev' for regex 'libgtkmm-2.4'
Note, selecting 'libgtkmm-2.4-doc' for regex 'libgtkmm-2.4'
The following additional packages will be installed:
  autoconf automake autopoint autotools-dev debhelper dh-autoreconf dh-strip-nondeterminism doc-base gir1.2-gtk-2.0
  gir1.2-harfbuzz-0.0 gtkmm-documentation icu-devtools libarchive-cpio-perl libatk1.0-dev libatkmm-1.6-dev
  libcairo-script-interpreter2 libcairo2-dev libcairomm-1.0-dev libfile-stripnondeterminism-perl libfontconfig1-dev
  libfreetype6-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libglibmm-2.4-doc libgraphite2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtkmm-3.0-doc
  libharfbuzz-dev libharfbuzz-gobject0 libice-dev libicu-dev libicu-le-hb-dev libicu-le-hb0 libiculx60 libltdl-dev libpango1.0-dev
  libpangomm-1.4-dev libpixman-1-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libsm-dev libtool libuuid-perl libxcb-shm0-dev libxcomposite-dev
  libxcursor-dev libxft-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxml2-utils libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev m4 po-debconf
  x11proto-composite-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-randr-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev
Suggested packages:
  autoconf-archive gnu-standards autoconf-doc dh-make dwz rarian-compat libatkmm-1.6-doc libcairo2-doc libcairomm-1.0-doc
  libgtkmm-3.0-dev libgraphite2-utils libgtk2.0-doc libice-doc icu-doc libtool-doc libpango1.0-doc libsigc++-2.0-doc libsm-doc
  gfortran | fortran95-compiler gcj-jdk m4-doc libmail-box-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  autoconf automake autopoint autotools-dev debhelper dh-autoreconf dh-strip-nondeterminism doc-base gir1.2-gtk-2.0
  gir1.2-harfbuzz-0.0 gtkmm-documentation icu-devtools libarchive-cpio-perl libatk1.0-dev libatkmm-1.6-dev
  libcairo-script-interpreter2 libcairo2-dev libcairomm-1.0-dev libfile-stripnondeterminism-perl libfontconfig1-dev
  libfreetype6-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libglibmm-2.4-doc libgraphite2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtkmm-2.4-dev
  libgtkmm-2.4-doc libgtkmm-3.0-doc libharfbuzz-dev libharfbuzz-gobject0 libice-dev libicu-dev libicu-le-hb-dev libicu-le-hb0
  libiculx60 libltdl-dev libpango1.0-dev libpangomm-1.4-dev libpixman-1-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libsm-dev libtool libuuid-perl
  libxcb-shm0-dev libxcomposite-dev libxcursor-dev libxft-dev libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxml2-utils libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev
  m4 po-debconf x11proto-composite-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-randr-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev
0 upgraded, 59 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 20 not upgraded.

My system had libgtkmm-2.4 installed already but for some reason didn't have the dependencies installed.

Note: This was after trying the other reinstall answers in this question (apt install --reinstall inkscape and apt-get install --reinstall libwpg-0.3-3 libwpd-0.10). Neither of those seemed to work in this case.

UPDATE: It seems that the package might have issues installing because of this error:

dpkg: error processing archive /tmp/apt-dpkg-install-aQJd54/58-libgtkmm-2.4-doc_1%3a2.24.5-2_all.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/doc/libgtkmm-2.4-dev/examples/README', which is also in package libgtkmm-2.4-dev:amd64 1:2.24.5-2
dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe)

So it looks like a small issue with not wanting to overwrite the README in examples causes this package to not fully install.

Running apt install --fix-broken appears to have finished the installation.

UPDATE: No, it hasn't. It's still broken, and there's apparently a bunch of people that have run into the same issue over the last decade.

Inkscape can't launch in Ubuntu 18.04

4 Answers4