How to Use Gdebi on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Debian based Linux distributions

As you may know, dpkg -i package_name.deb is used for installing software on debian systems. But dpkg -i does not install the package dependencies.

Example: I want to install packageX.deb, but it is not in the default repositories so I can not install it with apt-get or aptitude, so I download it from the internet, by wget let’s say.

$ wget https://linuxg.net/package-example/packageX.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i packageX.deb

But this installation cannot be done successfully because it depends on a packageY, that is not installed in the system (we assume that packageY is in the default repos).

So, next you have to install packageY with apt-get install and next to install with dpkg packageX.deb:

$ sudo apt-get install packageX.deb
$ sudo dpkg -u packageY

If you want to avoid all this installation package trouble, install a .deb package with gdebi.

Gdebi is a smart tool capable of installing .deb packages, and using the apt-get package manager in the background, to install the software dependencies.

First, install gdebi: sudo apt-get install gdebi

$ sudo gdebi packageX.deb

This will try to install packageX.deb with dpkg -i , find out that it needs packageY (or other dependencies), installs packageY and the other dependencies needed (with apt-get -f install), and install the packageX.deb with dpkg -i.