Broken package error when trying to install Kubuntu-desktop in Ubuntu 15.10

Question

I simply cannot get kubuntu-desktop to install properly. I have tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it, I think, 4 times now. Every time I do I get the same broken package error.

Unpacking kde-config-telepathy-accounts (4:15.08.2-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.08.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/accounts/services/google-im.service', which is also in package account-plugin-google 0.12+15.10.20150723-0ubuntu1
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.08.2-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Doing "sudo apt-get -f install" does not help. The only way to fix this seems to be to load synaptic and force remove the broken package. Strangely enough, "Plasma" subsequently appears as an option in the greeter screen, even after removing the rest of "kubuntu-desktop".

I'm not sure what the problem is here. I don't know why it won't update properly, and I don't know why I can boot Plasma at all. Is the generic Plasma not the same as Kubuntu? Am I doing something dumb?

I also cannot get Unity (Ubuntu) to start at all (not that I'd ever want to), so it's possible that there's something seriously wrong with my installation.

Answer 1

I had the same problem.

After some reading up on APT I was able to finish the kubuntu-desktop install and get APT generally working again. I had to force-remove account-plugin-google and its dependency unity-scope-drive:

dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq account-plugin-google unity-scope-gdrive

And then you can fix it and continue your kubuntu install with

apt-get install -f

I have not attempted to reinstall those packages so I don't know if this is a real "fix" but it at least got APT working again.