Error, bug or something else

[wilsojeffrey]

Every combination of commands I try ends with that message about unmet dependencies. All associated with one application that I can't seem to delete

[sudodus]

- Did you check that your file system is healthy according to the link in post #4 ?

- Are you prepared to remove the programs installed via the non-ubuntu repositories and then remove those repositories? It can be a lot of work, and it may or may not help you solve the problem.

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Edit: At this point I would be happy if some other people will chip in and offer new ideas to try

[CatKiller]

Every combination of commands I try ends with that message about unmet dependencies. All associated with one application that I can't seem to delete

The package manager seems like magic sometimes, but it just goes through the lists of dependencies for each package to create a dependency tree to help determine what it should do to achieve what you've asked it to do. Sometimes it gets confused and can't work it out (in this case, because you seem to have a different version of evolution-common than the other components of evolution).

It's trying its hardest to remove evolution (because you've asked it to) but to keep all of the dependencies (because you haven't asked it to remove them). apt is only one front-end command for the APT system; there are others (like apt-get and aptitude) that make different choices about handling dependencies.

Since you don't want evolution, one approach would be to tell apt that you don't want evolution's dependencies either:

sudo apt remove evolution evolution-common evolution-ews evolution-plugin-bogofilter evolution-plugin-pstimport evolution-plugins libevolution

to see if that gets your package manager untangled.

[wilsojeffrey]

That did it. Thank you so much, and to everyone who tried to help. If I was younger and had more time, I'd try to learn why. Cheers

[wilsojeffrey]

[sudo apt updateHit:1 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:2 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                                        
Get:3 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease [114 kB]                                                  
Get:4 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [101 kB]                                                          
Get:5 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [114 kB]                      
Hit:6 http://ppa.launchpad.net/audio-recorder/ppa/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:7 http://ppa.launchpad.net/mscore-ubuntu/mscore-stable/ubuntu focal InRelease   
Hit:8 http://ppa.launchpad.net/savoury1/digikam/ubuntu focal InRelease
Fetched 328 kB in 2s (151 kB/s)                    
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.

[sudodus]

Thanks CatKiller, for the solution, and congratulations wilsojeffrey

I would like to know how you found all those dependencies of evolution. Is there a general method (command or web-site)? Or did you simply look for packages with names containing evolution ... ?

[CatKiller]

Thanks CatKiller, for the solution, and congratulations wilsojeffrey

I would like to know how you found all those dependencies of evolution. Is there a general method (command or web-site)? Or did you simply look for packages with names containing evolution ... ?

The earlier code output provided showed which packages were having dependency problems.

[Impavidus]

Unpacking evolution-common (3.36.5-0ubuntu1) over (3.36.4-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/evolution-common_3.36.5-0ubuntu1_all.deb (--unpack):
 failed to stat (dereference) existing symlink '/usr/share/help/sl/evolution/mail-encryption-gpg-decrypting.page': Input/output error

That looks like the root cause of your problem. Input/output errors on filesystem access indicate filesystem damage, if not hard drive damage. I suggest you keep a close eye on your hard drive.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools