How to install Parsec on Debian 12

I tried installing Parsec on Debian 12 today, and it did not work at first because of missing dependencies error

 parsec : Depends: libavcodec58 but it is not installable

Even though Parsec supports Ubuntu, when it comes to Debian 12, you can't install Parsec without installing the required dependencies first.

These dependencies can't be downloaded from the terminal on Debian 12, since they are not available on Debian repositories.

However, you can download them manually one by one and install them on your system.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Parsec on Debian 12, and how to install the missing dependencies manually.

Step 1 - Download Parsec

Parsec ships a deb file that you can install on Ubuntu.

So to download Parsec, first go to Parsec's official website, and click the download button.

https://parsec.app/downloads

Step 2 - Download Dependencies

Parsec requires these dependencies to be installed on your system, in order to be able to install Parsec.

This is the list of the dependencies that you will need to install to be able to run Parsec without any issues

libaom0
 libavcodec58
 libavutil56
 libcodec2
 libswresample3
 libvpx6
 libwebp6
 libx264-155
 libx265-179

For example, to download libavcodec58 open the link below

https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/amd64/libavcodec58/download

Then simply click to "security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu" to download the deb file of the package

You can download all other dependencies from the same repository, all you have to do is simply replace the name of the package on the link above, and follow the same procedure to download it.

https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/amd64/libavcodec58/download - Download libavcodec58
https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/amd64/libaom0/download - Download libaom0

Step 3 - Install Dependencies

Once you have downloaded all the dependencies mentioned above, you can now install them one by one.

To install these dependencies you can use the apt package manager

sudo apt install ./libavcodec58_4.2.7-0ubuntu0.1_amd64.deb

If you try to install libavcodec58 without installing other packages first, you will get the following error

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libavcodec58 : Depends: libaom0 (>= 1.0.0) but it is not installable
                Depends: libavutil56 (= 7:4.2.7-0ubuntu0.1) but it is not installable
                Depends: libswresample3 (= 7:4.2.7-0ubuntu0.1) but it is not installable
                Depends: libvpx6 (>= 1.6.0) but it is not installable
                Depends: libwebp6 (>= 0.5.1) but it is not installable
                Depends: libx264-155 but it is not installable
                Depends: libx265-179 (>= 3.2) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

To fix this error, you need to install other dependencies first, and libavcodec58 should be installed last, this way you will be able to install all dependencies without issues.

Step 4 - Install Parsec

Once you have installed all dependencies above, you can proceed to install Parsec. To install Parsec, launch terminal and run the command below

sudo apt install ./parsec-linux.deb

Step 5 - Launch Parsec

To launch Parsec from your terminal, you can do so by running the command below

parsecd

You can also launch Parsec from the Gnome menu

Parsec GUI

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to install Parsec and how to install all the required dependencies in order to be able to run Parsec on Debian 12.