Broken packages

Hi guys
I have been using Zorin for about 3 months now and gradually have been having problems installing and trying out various programs with a common message about broken packages so cant install. Have tried synaptic package manager to fix broken packages and tried the reboot to safe mode to fix packages but to no avail.
Is there any way to purge packages that are broken
thanks in advance

I assume you are doing sudo apt-get purge and sudo apt-get autoremove with the packages... can you reproduce the message you are getting?

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
that's with both sudo apt-get purge and sudo apt-get autoremove

dweeb52 wrote:0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
that's with both sudo apt-get purge and sudo apt-get autoremove

That's good. It means nothing is obviously broken.

I assume messages that are not normal are showing up broken in sudo apt-get update? Can you try one of the package installs that is failing and copy the message?

EDIT: just fixing unclear speech

Thanks Deacon
ok, as an example trying to install qalculate (as well as other programs but let's keep to this one ) , it is in the synaptic package manager , right click to install
message : Depends: qalculate-gtk but it is not going to be installed
click on qalculate-gtk to install , get warning ! in red triangle
click apply
message : Could not apply changes! Fix broken packages first
back to square one , basically i need to know how to identify which packages are broken , there seem to be many

dweeb52 wrote:Thanks Deacon
ok, as an example trying to install qalculate (as well as other programs but let's keep to this one ) , it is in the synaptic package manager , right click to install
message : Depends: qalculate-gtk but it is not going to be installed
click on qalculate-gtk to install , get warning ! in red triangle
click apply
message : Could not apply changes! Fix broken packages first
back to square one , basically i need to know how to identify which packages are broken , there seem to be many

Ok, close out Synaptic. Open a terminal. Do the following two commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If there's still a problem with dependencies afterwards, we can force the install. What's basically happening is not so much "broken" packages (though that's what we call them) but mismatching packages.

Any luck?

sorry for delay , narrowing search for problem - now at stage of forcing python-aptdaemon.gtkwidgets seems to be affecting most of my problems . Thanks deacon , did as suggested ended up with same results and thanks swarfendor ended up with same messages , will persist, now it is just an annoyance , everything works well and am not regretting switching from win7 to zorin, it's just if I need to install new programs I could hit a hurdle if cant work it out - thanks again all
edit : ok swarf, had another look at gnome, in synaptic package manager gnome is completely missing ! went to install again and got message
gnome:
Depends: gnome-core but it is not going to be installed
Depends: evolution (>=3.0) but it is not installable
Depends: evolution-plugins (>=3.0) but it is not installable
Depends: gnome-games but it is not going to be installed
Depends: tomboy but it is not going to be installed or
gnote but it is not going to be installed
Depends: vinagre but it is not going to be installed
Depends: inkscape (>=0.48) but it is not installable
Depends: transmission-gtk but it is not going to be installed
Depends: epiphany-extensions but it is not going to be installed
Depends: gedit-plugins but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: browser-plugin-gnash but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: gnome-games-extra-data but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: liferea but it is not installable or
evolution-rss but it is not going to be installed or
blam but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: menu-xdg but it is not going to be installed

yet gnome desktop, video, games etc is installed and am using daily without problems !?

YAY !!!! Thanks Swarf, again, was faulty iso, fixed by booting into previous linux version from grub screen , updating , fixing broken packages from synaptic package manager, reupdating, applying then logout, login running update manager reboot and TADA ! happy chappy , all working goodly
I think it's all clean , seems it , will update if probs occur
Thanks again all