I'm completely new to ROS and Catkin and fairly new to Ubuntu. I have already installed ROS Kinetic and Gazebo8 on my system and they seem to be working. I am now trying to install Catkin and having trouble. I started by using the command:

sudo apt-get install cmake python-catkin-pkg python-empy python-nose python-setuptools libgtest-dev build-essential

then:

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-catkin

which worked flawlessly. Next step was:

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src

no problem so far. The directory was created and I was able to cd into it.

catkin_init_workspace

and this is where I fail. The error message I get is:

The program 'catkin_init_worksapce is currently not install. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt install catkin

when I type the above instruction I get an error about umet dependencies.

catkin : Depends: python-catkin-pkg but it is not going to be installed

I believe the problem is mixing the streams. I try to uninstall catkin to start fresh and I get a message that catkin is not installed. So I try to install catkin and I get a message that catkin is already installed. Any help is much appreciated.