As a geoscientist working a lot with R, I just had another worst-day-ever installing GDAL and PROJ. Python is less problematic because you can always have everything clean in your conda environment.
With R, you can do a docker, but not as convenient.
if you managed with gdal, e.g. sf, stars, rgdal all works, but not raster, then you probably need to reinstall the package “terra”! I tried many things with my gdal but this comes to a rescue.
The gdal probelm happens probably more often with LINUX because with windows the cleaning up/ uninstalling is easier.
The problem was I had a gdal 3.4, it is incompatible with some software, so I installed a gdal 2.4, then of course the PROJ will complain. Then I started a loop of removing – reinstalling – manually fixing gdal-config file – manually removing and downloading things – searching for solutions – try – try -try
But the problems are just endless. And things just got all messed up. Well, you still learn something, you learn more about gdal, but nothing useful.
All I need is a clean-wash of all gdal things. This blog comes to rescue.
But sudo apt-get --reinstall install gdal-bin never cleans things up.
So what you need to do is:
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove libgdal
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove libgdal29
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove gdal-bin
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove libkml-dev
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove libproj-dev
Then
apt-get install libgdal-dev gdal-bin libproj15 libproj19 libproj-dev
a trick for the "sf' package is
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libproj.so.15 /usr/lib/libproj.so.12
I gave full credit to the excellent post: https://bertelsen.ca/post/gdal-3-3-1-on-ubuntu/
I hope now it is the end of my gdal-headache.
Autumn sunshine 