On Sun, 28 Dec 2014, Timothy Pearson wrote:

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>> On Sun, 28 Dec 2014, Michele Calgaro wrote:
>>
>>>
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>>> On 2014/12/28 06:19 PM, Felmon Davis wrote:
>>>
>>> It means you are using the packages from the development branch, I
>>> suspect Slavek's repository.
>>> One way is to switch to the official TDE R14.0.0 packages (you can find
>>> instruction on the wiki), or if you are not going to upgrade that system
>>> for a while, you can just stick with what you have. R14.0.1
>>> (development) so far has a few fixes over R14.0.0 already commited, so
>>> they wouldn't harm your installation.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>  Michele
>>
>> I think I'm asking the wrong question. to be sure, I don't know how I
>> got into the Development branch but the real issue is I'm having
>> trouble with several programs.
>>
>> let me mention the issues; perhaps there's some general approach to
>> them. I'm reluctant to spin off more threads though; I've taken up
>> too much time as it is.
>>
>> a) can't start evince except by exporting XAUTHORITY and running it as
>> root. (and I hate the interface!)
>
> That sounds like one of the GTK engines might be causing problems.  When
> you run evince under TDE from a terminal what does it spew?

my googling hasn't helped so far but here is the message; this error 
occurs frequently on google.

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** (evince:1399): WARNING **: Error retrieving accessibility bus 
address: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name 
org.a11y.Bus was not provided by any .service files
Segmentation fault
------

>> b) cannot install okular without massive dependencies or backpedalling
>> this or that systemd files or other bits of intestines.
>
> IIRC okular will have many dependencies due to being a KDE application;
> this is normal-ish?

hope not! hmm.... it seems it may now install on one of the 
lappies! just gives a list of dependencies but no complaints; I'll 
proceed later. on the other I get:

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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:
  okular : Depends: libokularcore5 (= 4:4.14.2-2) but it is not going 
to be installed
           Depends: kde-runtime (> 4:4.10) but it is not going to be 
installed
           Depends: libphonon4 (>= 4:4.6.0really4.3.80) but it is not 
going to be installed
           Depends: phonon but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
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I run "dpkg --get-selections | grep hold" and see nothing.

>> c) can't install bluetooth utilities on the laptop that has it.
>
> Terminal output would be helpful here too. :-)

for instance attempting "apt-get install bluedevil" yields:

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The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  bluedevil : Depends: kde-runtime (> 4:4.10) but it is not going to be 
installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
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weird how kde-runtime is involved. attempting to install it yields 
another bouquet of "depends ... not going to be installed; you have 
held broken packages" messages.

F.

-- 
Felmon Davis

I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.