I’m using Ubuntu Mate 1.8.2 and for some unknown reason installed, or tried to install, the AVG deb package (avg2013flx).  Well, the install failed. I did some research to attempt to rectify this and instead came to the conclusion that I didn’t need AVG in the first place.  So I tried uninstalling it… and that failed:

Turns out part of the install failure involved the installers inability to fire up the AVG service, avgd.service, and that’s where the uninstaller was choking – trying to turn off that service that wasn’t on in the first place.  What a stupid ass uninstallation script.  Thankfully the fix was pretty easy:

1. Open an elevated (sudo) text editor of your choosing and navigate to /var/lib/dpkg/info and open the file avg2013flx.prerm
2.  Locate all instances of the following lines (my prerm had two sets) and comment them out by placing a pound sign (or a number sign or hashtag depending on your age, geographic location or level of nerdiness) at the beginning of each line.
   
3. Save the file, and then attempt to uninstall the app again:
   
   sudo apt-get remove --purge avg2013flx

   1	sudo apt-get remove --purge avg2013flx

If you were having the same problem I was, that should do the trick.