Debian and LSB

Debian discontinued LSB support in 2015, see for example lwn.net: Debian dropping the Linux Standard Base. In the past, Debian strived to follow and comply with the Linux Standard Base (http://www.linuxbase.org). The LSB has a high and increasing complexity, for example release 4.1 consisted of 716202 interfaces. Huge efforts had been needed to comply. In 2015, only 8 applications from 6 vendors actually used it at all. LSB did not provide the benefits some assumed and no one was found to maintain it, so almost all LSB support had been dropped. However, Debian still aligns to FHS, with some adjustments.

Using LSB

Debian provides the required lsb keystone packages, to enable support on your system just install the "lsb" package. Any LSB compliant application will depend on this package and ensure you have it installed as well.

See the list of lsb keystone packages in Debian.

If you are trying to support a newer version of the LSB than the version of Debian you are running provides, backports.org may have backported lsb keystone packages that you can use. In this case LSB interfaces provided by the system may be out of date as well and you may need backports for them as well.

Installing LSB Applications

LSB applications are provided in either the RPM package format or in an LSB-compliant self-installing executable. In the case of RPM packages, use the alien(1) tool to convert the rpm to a Debian package and then install normally. Make sure to use the "-c" option to alien to ensure that package scripts are converted as well.

LSB Application Development

LSB Runtime Development

Work is coordinated via the debian-lsb mailing list.

This page is a collection of pointers to other LSB topics, click on a subject for more info.

Additional information

Additional information no the status of LSB adoption in Debian can be found in Matt Taggart's LSB pages ("Note": out-of-date but some information is still relevant)


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