Minecraft Launcher for Debian 13 seeks incorrect dependency name

To solve the dependency issue, this is what I did. I performed all the steps from my Downloads directory in the terminal.

The problem I encountered when trying to install Minecraft on my new version of Debian is that the package failed due to dependencies. When I ran the command to install it, the terminal showed me that two packages were missing: default-jre and libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0.

The error was this:

user@debian:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i Minecraft.deb
Selecting previously unselected package minecraft-launcher.
(Reading database ... 115656 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack Minecraft.deb ...
Unpacking minecraft-launcher (2.1.3) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of minecraft-launcher:
minecraft-launcher depends on default-jre; however: Package default-jre is not installed.
minecraft-launcher depends on libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0); however: Package libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing package minecraft-launcher (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for mailcap (3.74) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.36.0-3) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.28-1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.18-2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing: minecraft-launcher

To try to fix it, I first attempted to install the libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 dependency separately, and the terminal indicated that the package no longer existed but had been replaced by another: libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-0.

The error was this:

user@debian:~/Downloads$ sudo apt install libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 Package libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source However the following packages replace it: libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-0:i386 libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-0 Error: Package 'libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0' has no installation candidate

After that, I tried to use sudo apt --fix-broken install to repair the installation, but it showed me that the only way to resolve the issue was to remove the Minecraft package I had installed.

The error was this:

user@debian:~/Downloads$ sudo apt --fix-broken install Correcting dependencies... Done REMOVING: minecraft-launcher Summary: Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 1, Not Upgrading: 0 1 not fully installed or removed. Space needed: 0 B / 93.9 GB available Continue? [Y/n] (Reading database ... 115658 files and directories currently installed.) Removing minecraft-launcher (2.1.3) ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.18-2) ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.36.0-3) ... Processing triggers for mailcap (3.74) ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.28-1) ...

My solution was what I describe below, editing the Minecraft package to make it look for the dependency with the correct name.

Steps to Fix the Package Dependency

1. First, I navigated to the Downloads directory with the following command: cd ~/Downloads

2. Then, I extracted the contents of the Minecraft.deb package using the full command dpkg-deb --raw-extract Minecraft.deb minecraft-extracted-package to put it into a new folder.

3. After that, I used the nano editor to open and edit the control file located inside the DEBIAN folder: nano minecraft-extracted-package/DEBIAN/control

4. Inside the control file, I found the line that started with Depends: and changed libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 to libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-0. Then, I saved the changes and closed the file.

5. Finally, I re-packaged the content with the correction to create a new .deb file named minecraft-launcher-fixed.deb: dpkg-deb --build minecraft-extracted-package minecraft-launcher-fixed.deb

6. With the new package ready, I installed the corrected package first with dpkg. This would fail because the default-jre and libgdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0-0 dependencies were still missing. Then, I used the apt command to fix the broken installation, which would install the remaining dependencies automatically. sudo dpkg -i minecraft-launcher-fixed.deb sudo apt --fix-broken install

This completely solved the dependency problem and allowed me to install the launcher without errors.