Running ROS on ElementaryOS by Modifying lsb-release

[AnthonyPhan]

Hi All,

I’ve been using Ubuntu for some time, primarily for working with ROS (Robot Operating System), which is tied to specific Ubuntu versions. Recently, I tried switching to ElementaryOS, but many ROS packages fail to install.

I suspect this is because the installation scripts check lsb-release to determine the Ubuntu version before downloading the appropriate package versions. Would it be safe to modify /etc/lsb-release to make ElementaryOS appear as its equivalent Ubuntu version? Or could this lead to unforeseen issues with system stability or package management?

Has anyone successfully done this, or is there a better approach to getting ROS working on ElementaryOS?

[ryonakano]

You shouldn't modify /etc/lsb-release, it's provided by our base-files package. Instead, you can use the LSB_OS_RELEASE environment variable to get the upstream Ubuntu information.

user@elementary-8:~$ export LSB_OS_RELEASE="/usr/lib/upstream-os-release"
user@elementary-8:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
Release:	24.04
Codename:	noble
user@elementary-8:~$ 

[AnthonyPhan]

Unfortunately when installing ROS via apt, many of the installation scripts are not using the environment variable you mentioned. This causes the installation to fail. I guess I'm trying to ask if there's a work around since it would be a massive undertaking to update the installation script for hundred a of different packages.