Repair an Installation on Linux (Ubuntu)

If you want to know how to do a repair installation on a Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) system for instances where you do not want to perform a complete operating system (OS) reinstallation and would also like to keep your current settings and configuration, just run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install --fix-broken

That fix should do the trick in case you accidentally got some of your packages removed. But if somehow that doesn't work and you are forced to do a full reinstallation, the directories you should backup in order to maintain and reset your current settings and configuration would be the /home and /etc folders (copy these onto backup media and paste them back after the reinstallation).