Software Installation – How to Install Applications Requiring gksu on Ubuntu 18.04

18.04gksusoftware installation

I downloaded the Upwork desktop App on ubuntu 18.04. When I open it with Gdebi package installer I saw this error:

I tried to install gksu manually via sudo apt install gksu but I got this error

Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package gksu is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'gksu' has no installation candidate

How can I install this software on ubuntu 18.04 (I download it yesturday so it is the most recent version on upwork website) ?

Best Answer

Introduction

As Jeremy Bicha wrote:

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Jeremy Bicha — 8 Comments

Today, gksu was removed from Ubuntu 18.04, four weeks after it was removed from Debian.

So theoretically speaking there are no packages on Bionic Beaver 18.04 LTS, depending on gksu. But this is not true:

$ apt-cache rdepends gksu
gksu
Reverse Depends:
  gexec
  wicd-gtk
  spacefm-gtk3
  spacefm
 |menu

$ aptitude why gksu 
i   menu Suggests gksu | kde-runtime | ktsuss

As you see some software, which are distibuted by third-party may depend on gksu package. So you can proceed installing gksu with method below on your own risk.

How to fix?

Possible solution is to install version from previous (17.10, artful) release.

Warning: do not execute the commands below if unsure!

Short method (as @MK suggested)

wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/libg/libgtop2/libgtop-2.0-10_2.32.0-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./libgtop-2.0-10_2.32.0-1_amd64.deb

wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/libg/libgksu/libgksu2-0_2.0.13~pre1-6ubuntu8_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./libgksu2-0_2.0.13~pre1-6ubuntu8_amd64.deb

wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gksu/gksu_2.0.2-9ubuntu1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./gksu_2.0.2-9ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Test

Test gksu (should work on Xorg-sessions)

gksu-properties # check that it has "Authentication mode" to "sudo"
gksu date
gksudo date

Notes

After installation the following packages will be marked as obsolete (locally-installed): gksu, libgksu2-0. But they will work as expected.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to install latest Graphviz

I presume you are trying to install that package using sudo dpkg -i package, well, that normally leads to package dependency problems so normally I suggest the use of gdebi. If you have any problematic package remove it. You can check using sudo apt-get check. Now down to business:

sudo apt-get install gdebi-core

With that we have ready gdebi. Now if you use a 64-bit system you may like to install the 64-bit package, likewise with 32-bits.

Now here comes the funny stuff...

sudo gdebi graphviz_2.37.20140208.0545-1\~saucy_amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Building data structures... Done 
Building data structures... Done 
This package is uninstallable
Dependency is not satisfiable: libgd2-noxpm (>= 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg)|libgd2-xpm (>= 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg)

And here is where you stop. The reason is that the stable package depends on package that were dropped of Debian, ergo Ubuntu 13.10:

libgd2 (2.0.36~rc1~dfsg-6.1) unstable; urgency=low

  * Non-maintainer upload.
  * Support multi-arch: (closes: #652496)
    - Mark libgd2-xpm, libgd2-noxpm, libgd2-xpm-dev and libgd2-noxpm-dev
      as same.
    - Adjust d-shlibs and dh-buildinfo build-dependency.
  * Drop .la files.

 -- Bastian Blank   Sun, 13 May 2012 09:16:37 +0000

Those are dependencies of graphviz so they should change them to libgd2-xpm-dev and libgd2-noxpm-dev respectively. If that's the case, you should download the latest build instead 2.38 or later, which includes the correct dependencies.

Ubuntu – E: Package ‘python-software-properties’ has no installation candidate

Install software-properties-common by running,

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

software-properties-common package is an alternate one for python-software-properties.

for <= 12.04

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

for >= 12.10

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common