So you’ve just set up Debian Linux, or possibly another Debian-based Linux distribution such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint (congratulations!) and are looking to do a little test run to ensure your system and its drivers are all working as you’d expect, and what better way to do this than to boot up Minecraft Java Edition?

So you go to their official site and click on "Debian + Debian Based," which upon successfully downloading, gives you a nicely packaged Minecraft.deb ready for installation by your trusty apt(8) package manager.
But of course, things can never just be simple or straightforward... there is an error! 

tshabbic@Debian:~$ sudo apt install Minecraft.deb
[...]
Unsatisfied dependencies:
minecraft-launcher : Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0) but it is not installable
Error: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
Error: The following information from --solver 3.0 may provide additional context:
   Unable to satisfy dependencies. Reached two conflicting decisions:
   1. minecraft-launcher:amd64=2.1.3 is selected for install
   2. minecraft-launcher:amd64 Depends libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0)
      but none of the choices are installable:
      [no choices]

This is rather strange, it was downloaded from Minecraft's first party website and surely they made no mistakes... so then, what's the issue? Well, it would appear that the dependency in question, libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0, was essentially renamed to libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 in late 2020, but this was seemingly never updated in Minecraft's Debian package -- which is rather unfortunate as it's yet another easily avoidable pain point for new Linux users just trying to play their favorite games.

Fortunately however, this is indeed easily fixable. I will be providing a walk through on how to fix the dependency error and get Minecraft Java edition working from the broken Minecraft.deb distributed from Minecraft's website! I'll be glossing over the technical jargin, what the commands we'll be executing actually mean/do, etc., as this isn't really designed to be a technical / educational post, just one that aims to provide a solution to a very specific and potentially frustrating problem. Note, this is done on my host Debian 13 (Trixie) system, I cannot guarantee the solution/steps I provide will apply exactly (if they are even necessary) to your system if you are on a different distribution or another Debian-based system.

First, we should probably go ahead and check if the actual package, libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 is on the system (it should be on Debian by default, but for whatever reason if it's not, or if you're on a different distro) you can check with: dpkg -s libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 2>/dev/null | grep Status. If nothing is returned, then try installing it with sudo apt install libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0. If the dependency was present, you should see Status: install ok installed - great!

Now it's time for a little package surgery -- like you may already know, most packages are just archives, and as such, their contents can be extracted and then operated upon. That's what we're going to do here as this dependency issue stems entirely from a typo in the file of the package that is responsible for communicating what other packages, libraries, etc., are required for the package in question to function properly.
To extract the package contents: dpkg-deb -R Minecraft.deb /tmp/Minecraft - this places the extracted contents of the package under /tmp/Minecraft. Then, cd /tmp/Minecraft; ls.

You should then see two directories: DEBIAN and usr -- the latter is of no importance to us; cd into DEBIAN, and there will be file named control. Open this file with your favorite text editor, navigate under the line that lists the dependencies, then find libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 and add the hypen such that it becomes libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0. If you're in a hurry, you can use the following command: sed -i '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 (This actually checks for if either package exists -- which is probably what the Minecraft.deb that is being distributed should check for in light of the not-so recent renaming of the dependency in question).

Now, repackage the contents: dpkg-deb -b /tmp/Minecraft /tmp/Minecraft.deb
Then, install it! sudo apt install /tmp/Minecraft.deb (and don't forget to clean up: rm -r /tmp/Minecraft && rm /tmp/Minecraft.deb

Voilà! Enjoy Minecraft Java Edition on your Debian(-based) system! If you're feeling lazy or just want to play the game as quickly as possible, I wrote a shell script that does all of this for you!