Installing Gnome Software Center on Loki

Question

trying to get Gnome Software Center going on a fresh install of Loki.

This is the error I am getting:

$ sudo apt install gnome-software
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-software : Depends: appstream but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.*

Googled around a bit, found a potential solution, that didn't work.

$ apt policy appstream
appstream:
Installed: 0.11.3-1~elementary0.4.1
Candidate: 0.11.3-1~elementary0.4.1

Version table:
*** 0.11.3-1~elementary0.4.1 999
999 http://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/os-patches/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
0.10.6-1~ubuntu16.04.2 100
100 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/main amd64 packages
0.9.4-1ubuntu3 500
500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages
0.9.4-1 500
500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages

$ sudo apt install appstream=0.10.3-1~ubuntu16.04~ppa2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Version '0.10.3-1~ubuntu16.04~ppa2' for 'appstream' was not found**

I have no idea idea what to do now. This is about my ninth day on Linux coming from Windows, go easy.

Answer 1

On this output:

Version table: *** 0.11.3-1~elementary0.4.1 999 999 http://ppa.launchpad.net/elementary-os/os-patches/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 0.10.6-1~ubuntu16.04.2 100 100 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/main amd64 packages 0.9.4-1ubuntu3 500 500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 Packages 0.9.4-1 500 500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages

This seems not to include the version you're trying to install (0.10.3-1~ubuntu16.04~ppa2). You can try one of these:

• 0.11.3-1~elementary0.4.1
• 0.10.6-1~ubuntu16.04.2
• 0.9.4-1ubuntu3
• 0.9.4-1

I would suggest trying to install the latest ones first but installing very old packages might break other packages you have installed in your system.

If all of the packages above have failed, either the issue in upstream Ubuntu hasn't been resolved yet or there are core packages that have incompatibilities with gnome-software-center. If that's the case, you might have to live without gnome-software-center for now until the package maintainers release a fix. (Elementary's default AppCenter is a nice alternative)