Bug#1115980: lsb-base: Include lsb-base in the default installation

[Matthew Vernon]

Hello,

On 22/09/2025 18:58, Van Snyder wrote:

> Waterloo Maple Software technical support said their license manager 
> (and most
> other licensed programs' managers) will not work without lsb-base being
> installed. They recommended installing it.

The "lsb-base" command doesn't exist in Debian, and hasn't for years 
now, as LSB itself is obsolete - bullseye (old-old-stable), for example, 
didn't have such a command. AFAICT Ubuntu has likewise not had this 
command since about 2015.

> They also recommended
> 
> ln -s /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /lib64/ld-lsb-x86-64.so.3

Definitely don't do that - if a library needs a different soname of that 
library, trying to fake that with a symlink will just result in crashes 
and confusing bugs.

I think Maple's install instructions are under-tested - I see they 
say[0] to install lsb-core and lsb-base on Ubuntu 24.04, but lsb-core 
doesn't exist in 24.04 (it was last shipped in 22.04).

In short, this is a problem with Maple, I'm afraid, not Debian (nor 
Ubuntu); I propose to close this bug report unless you think I've missed 
something important?

Regards,

Matthew

[0] 
https://www.maplesoft.com/support/install/2025/Maple/Install.html#MapleInstallGuide_SysReq