Comment 2 for bug 68536

I also have been suffering the same right from day 1 of upgrading dapper drake to edgy beta, and it still continues even after the release of RC and v6.10.

What might be happening in the case of Dat Chu is that the dpkg will be hanging in the middle, as it wouldn't have continued the installation/upgradation. And hence, something corresponding to the splash screen or the desktop might have also got affected.

I found a work around for this, for my own itches, which seemed to be effective to atleast update other packages which got downloaded.

1. sudo dpkg --force-remove-reinstreq --purge <package-name>

2. If there is some error in the prerm script, then you have to open the prerm script in a editor and add "exit 0" right after the first hashbang (#!) line.

3. The command (1) will remove the package completely. Now either you can try installing the new version of the package or carry out the installation of the other packages which apt/dpkg downloaded

sudo apt-get -f install

This will install all the other packages that had been downloaded and waiting for installation. Hope the bug related to the uim-common package gets solved soon.