minecraft launcher fails to install on linux (debian)

i should have added to the bug report before submiting. the steps to reproduce this bug are as follows:

1. have any machine with ubuntu 25.10 installed

2. download the official minecraft.deb file from the minecraft website

3. try to install the file

4. the error will present itself.

Same problem. Typo in dependencies: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 must be libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0
To fix edit this:

mkdir extracted 
dpkg-deb -x Minecraft.deb extracted/ 
dpkg-deb -e Minecraft.deb extracted/DEBIAN/ 
nano extracted/DEBIAN/control 
dpkg-deb -b extracted/ Minecraft-fixed.deb

Oh I'm aware of what the problem is and I wrote a script to automatically download, fix, and install the launcher and gave it to a few of my friends. I just wanted to open another bug report for this bug since the other ones are closed and this issue has clearly not been fixed.

The way I fixed it is by editing the control file and changed part of it from

`libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)`

To

`libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0) || libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)`

I can post my script here later for people to accomplish this automatically. My whole point in this bug report is to make it clear to whoever closed the other people's tickets that this issue has not been resolved.

Also apparently my code block was fucked up… oops.

Same here:

• Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

• openjdk version "25.0.3-ea" 2026-04-21

• OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 25.0.3-ea+7-Ubuntu-2)

• OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.0.3-ea+7-Ubuntu-2, mixed mode, sharing)

If I try to install it through the App Center, it gets stuck in an endless "Installing..." state.

Via terminal:

$ sudo dpkg -i Minecraft.deb
$ sudo apt-get install -f

Selecting previously unselected package minecraft-launcher.
(Reading database… 163539 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 gnome-menus (3.38.1-1ubuntu1)…
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.28-1build1)…
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.18-2build1)…
Errors were encountered while processing:
minecraft-launcher
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
Solving dependencies... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
minecraft-launcher
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
(Reading database… 163540 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing minecraft-launcher (2.1.3)…
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.18-2build1)…
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.38.1-1ubuntu1)…
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.28-1build1)…

@Evgeniy Loginov: Thanks a lot. That worked for me.

I wrote a script to automatically download, unpack, modify, repack, and install the minecraft .deb installer. ive broken it down line by line so that its clear what is happening. I’ve tested this on ubuntu 25.01 and 26.04, but it should work on all other (modern) ubuntu/ubuntu based distros, and most debian based distros in general. hopefully this helps people who dont want to fuck around with things manually.

# setting up a temporary working directory to do stuff in
sudo mkdir /tmp/minecraft_working_dir

# moving to that new directory
cd /tmp/minecraft_working_dir

# downloading the minecraft installer .deb file from the official MC website
sudo wget -q https://launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb

# unpacking the .deb
sudo dpkg-deb -R Minecraft.deb temp_work_dir

# removing the original .deb file
sudo rm Minecraft.deb

# moving to the directory with the dependancies control file in it
cd /tmp/minecraft_working_dir/temp_work_dir/DEBIAN

# modifying the debian dependancies control file
sudo perl -pi -e 's/libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 \(>= 2.22.0\)/libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 \(>= 2.22.0\) | libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 \(>= 2.22.0\)/g' control

# moving back to the temporary working directory
cd /tmp/minecraft_working_dir

# re-packing the corrected files into a new .deb
sudo dpkg-deb -b temp_work_dir Minecraftfixed.deb

# actually installing the new fixed .deb file
sudo apt-get -y install ./Minecraftfixed.deb

# moving out of the temporary working directory
cd /tmp

#removing the temporary working directory and its contents since it is no longer needed
sudo rm -rf minecraft_working_dir

To use this script, simply copy and paste it into the terminal and run it. since it uses sudo, it'll ask for your password.

(i do just want to note that generally its bad practice to copy/paste random code you find online into the terminal and then run it. thats why i’ve broken down what everything does here, to make it easier to verify. you can google the various commands and make sure that they do what they're labeled as. or you could just run this script without verifying it if you feel like it.)

While waiting for a patch to arrive, you can use the attached script to patch the package:

wget https://launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb
./patch-minecraft-deb.sh Minecraft.deb
sudo dpkg -i Minecraft-patched.deb

This will install a suffixed version with +ubuntu26fix1:

$ dpkg -s minecraft-launcher
Package: minecraft-launcher
Status: install ok installed
Maintainer: Petr Mrázek <petr@mojang.com>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 2.1.3+ubuntu26fix1
Depends: default-jre, libasound2 (>= 1.0.23), libatk-bridge2.0-0 (>= 2.5.3), libatk1.0-0 (>= 2.2.0), libatspi2.0-0 (>= 2.9.90), libc6 (>= 2.16), libcairo2 (>= 1.6.0), libcups2 (>= 1.4.0), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.5.12), libdrm2 (>= 2.4.38), libexpat1 (>= 2.0.1), libgbm1 (>= 8.1~0), libfontconfig1 (>= 2.8.0), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0) | libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.39.4), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.18.9), libnspr4 (>= 2:4.9-2~), libnss3 (>= 2:3.22), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0) | libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libstdc++6 (>= 4.8.0), libx11-6 (>= 2:1.4.99.1), libxcomposite1 (>= 1:0.3-1), libxcursor1 (>> 1.1.2), libxdamage1 (>= 1:1.1), libxext6, libxfixes3, libxi6 (>= 2:1.2.99.4), libxrandr2 (>= 2:1.2.99.3), libxrender1, libxss1, libxtst6, libx11-xcb1, libxcb-dri3-0, libxcb1 (>= 1.9.2), libbz2-1.0, lsb-base (>= 4.1), xdg-utils (>= 1.0.2), wget, libcurl3 | libcurl4, libuuid1
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.14.0), wget | curl, ca-certificates
Description: Official Minecraft Launcher
Homepage: https://minecraft.net/
Copyright: All rights reserved

Same issue here. The scripts above help (thank you), but I would love to see a permanent fix.

Still an issue as of this writing, but the above script made it work.