cannot install gcc

[John R. Sowden]

On 03/11/2014 06:12 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 11 March 2014 13:05, John R. Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net> wrote:
>> got the following:
>>
>> Reading package lists... Done
>> Building dependency tree
>> Reading state information... Done
>> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
>
> OK, mostly, that's good news. It means that there are no missing
> dependencies or anything. The "1 not upgraded" bit might mean that you
> have an package that's pinned at some lower/older version, though.
>
> I would suggest, next, that you try:
>
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
>
> If that works smoothly, good. If it installs stuff, it's probably
> worth rebooting.
>
> Then try:
>
> sudo apt-get install build-essential -y
>
> That should bring in GCC and all its ancillary parts. If there are
> problems, then this might help:
>
> sudo apt-get clean
> sudo apt-get autoclean
> sudo apt-get autoremove
> sudo apt-get purge
>
> Then try
>
> sudo apt-get install build-essential -y
>
> ... again.
>
ran the two and this is returned after the 2nd:

john at sentry10:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
   binutils
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

binutils crashed earlier when I tried to extract the pkg
I tried to upgrade it, but, in ubuntu soft center it said it needed to 
delete a lot of pkgs, including free pascal-thought that was weird 
(reverse dependency?)