When All Else Fails, Uninstall Your Entire Desktop
Published on 27 Mar 2020
I was trying to install the dependencies for mutt-wizard, but apt simply refused to install isync:
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:
ca-certificates-java : Depends: ca-certificates (>= 20121114) but it is not going to be installed
isync : Depends: libssl1.1 (>= 1.1.0) but it is not going to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
I followed all the usual steps to no avail.
I forcibly downgraded libssl1.1 to an older version, and inadvertantly uninstalled the entire Ubuntu desktop.
I then reinstalled ubuntu-desktop, and lo and behold: I could now install isync.
I was briefly tempted to leave my machine without a desktop environment and finally make the switch to the i3 tiling window manager, but that will have to be a project for another day.