Ubuntu – FGLRX won’t install: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages

dependenciesfglrxpackage-management

When I run sudo apt-get install fglrx, I get the following output:

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 resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 fglrx : Depends: xorg-video-abi-11 but it is not installable or
                  xorg-video-abi-12 but it is not installable or
                  xorg-video-abi-13 but it is not installable or
                  xorg-video-abi-14 but it is not installable or
                  xorg-video-abi-15
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Unfortunately I am used to working on windows servers and am not familiar with Ubuntu.

Best Answer

Unfortunately this is due to a bug in the latest updates to Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04:

apt-get fails to install fglrx or fglrx-updates in 14.04.2 and 12.04.5

To fix it:

  1. Remove the hardware enablement stack

    • Ubuntu 14.04 (tested and confirmed working):

      sudo apt-get install --install-recommends xserver-xorg libgl1-mesa-glx libegl1-mesa-drivers

    • Ubuntu 12.04 (untested):

      sudo apt-get install --install-recommends xserver-xorg libgl1-mesa-glx

    For some reason I had to run it twice since the first time returned an error.

  2. Clean up extra packages

    sudo apt-get autoremove

  3. Install fglrx

    sudo apt-get install fglrx

  4. Reboot

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