I'm in the middle of experiencing exactly the same problem. To answer Pedro's questions I can provide the following information: 1. the specific steps or actions you took that caused you to encounter the problem. Upgrading from karmic to lucid. Manually changed all occurrences of karmic to lucid in /etc/apt/sources.list (see bottom of comment). On the command line, performed: $sudo apt-get update $sudo apt-get dist-upgrade Once upgrade was complete, restarted the computer. Presented with login screen, no gnome desktop environment available, only xterm. 2. the behavior you expected Gnome to still be present. Along with nautilus and the rest of the environment. 3. the behavior you actually encountered (in as much detail as possible). Gnome was not installed, nor was nautilus. "$ apt-get install nautilus" succeeded as expected. when I perform "$ apt-get install gnome" I get the following information: 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 to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies. gnome: Depends: swfdec-mozilla but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages I can then perform the following: $ sudo apt-get install swfdec-mozilla Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: w3c-dtd-xhtml Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: libswfdec-0.8-0 The following packages will be REMOVED epiphany-browser epiphany-extensions The following NEW packages will be installed libswfdec-0.8-0 swfdec-mozilla 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/471kB of archives. After this operation, 2,683kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y (Reading database ... 243291 files and directories currently installed.) Removing epiphany-extensions ... Removing epiphany-browser ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/firefox to provide /usr/bin/x-www-browser (x-www-browser) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/google-chrome to provide /usr/bin/gnome-www-browser (gnome-www-browser) in auto mode. Processing triggers for man-db ... Selecting previously deselected package libswfdec-0.8-0. (Reading database ... 243025 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libswfdec-0.8-0 (from .../libswfdec-0.8-0_0.8.4-1build1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package swfdec-mozilla. Unpacking swfdec-mozilla (from .../swfdec-mozilla_0.8.2-1ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Setting up libswfdec-0.8-0 (0.8.4-1build1) ... Setting up swfdec-mozilla (0.8.2-1ubuntu2) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/iceape/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (iceape-flashplugin) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (iceweasel-flashplugin) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (mozilla-flashplugin) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (firefox-flashplugin) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/xulrunner/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (xulrunner-flashplugin) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/midbrowser/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (midbrowser-flashplugin) in auto mode. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/swfdec-mozilla/libswfdecmozilla.so to provide /usr/lib/xulrunner-addons/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so (xulrunner-addons-flashplugin) in auto mode. Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place and trying to install gnome again results in: $ sudo apt-get install gnome 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 to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies. gnome: Depends: epiphany-extensions but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages As another poster commented, I have tried changing my sources to point to "main", and moving to different mirrors, uk and us, none of which has been successful. My sources list is: $cat sources.list # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main universe restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main universe restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid multiverse deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-backports main multiverse universe restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-backports main multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security main universe restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security main deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security multiverse deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu lucid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu lucid main deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-proposed universe main multiverse restricted deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ lucid free non-free deb-src http://packages.medibuntu.org/ lucid free non-free # Google software repository deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu lucid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu lucid main deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rabbitvcs/ppa/ubuntu lucid main