Need Help With Slightly Borked Debian Testing System

[Mark Phillips]

I am running Debian testing on my laptop. I use my laptop in two
configurations - stand alone and with an external monitor and bluetooth
keyboard and mouse. Everything was working in that I could switch back and
forth as needed.

I then had a need to write a bunch of documents/emails in German so I tried
to add a German keyboard mapping and dictionary to the system. I was
successful and could switch back and forth between German and English in
LibreOffice and Gmail using the external keyboard.

I then ran an aptitude update and then an upgrade and the world collapsed.

* I no longer have gnome 3, but a fall back version of gnome 2.

* I can type correctly with the external keyboard, but the keyboard on the
laptop is all messed up. The keys do not type what is printed on the keys.

* I don't have a German keyboard mapping any more.

I googled for some solutions, ran some dpkg-reconfigures but I just cannot
get the laptop keyboard to work properly, nor get back to gnome 3. When I
run an aptitude update and then upgrade now, I get this

# aptitude upgrade
Resolving dependencies...
open: 8922; closed: 14679; defer: 68; conflict: 194

and the conflicts are never resolved - the numbers just keep changing and
the cpus are pegged at 100%.

apt-get upgrade shows many packages to be upgraded, and does not report any
dependency issues.

Should I try apt-get upgrade to see if it fixes the problem? How do I go
about fixing the keyboard and gnome 3 issues?

Thanks,

Mark
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