FWIW, I used the following hacky workaround for the moment: Create a file: python3.10-distutils-bogus:
Section: python Priority: optional Standards-Version: 3.9.2 Package: python3.10-distutils-bogus Version: 1.0 Maintainer: Sam Watkins <s...@ucm.dev> Provides: python3.10-distutils Description: Dummy package to satisfy python3.10-distutils Run: equivs-build python3.10-distutils dpkg -i sudo dpkg -i python3.10-distutils-bogus_1.0_all.deb sudo apt install python3.10-venv It does seem to work okay to create venvs.
