Get linux name and version

How to Find Linux Distribution Release Name and Version

There are many commands in Linux to get the same information and one such command is the lsb_release, which is used to get the Linux distribution-related information such as OS name, code name, release information.

In some Linux distributions, the lsb_release command will be available to use and in some distributions, you have to install it, as this command is part of the LSB-core package.

Check Linux Distribution Information

To check if the lsb_release command is installed run the following command.

$ which lsb_release /usr/bin/lsb_release 

In some distributions like Ubuntu, this command is already available to use but you will get the following error when you try to use some flags.

$ lsb_release -v No LSB modules are available. 

Install lsb-core in Linux Distributions

To fix this you need to install the lsb-core package. Depending upon the distribution you are using run the following commands to install the lsb-core package.

------- On Debian/Ubuntu ------- $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install lsb-core ------- On Arch/Manjaro ------- $ pacman -Syu lsb-release ------- On RHEL/CentOS ------- $ sudo yum update $ sudo yum install redhat-lsb-core ------- On Fedora ------- $ sudo dnf update $ sudo dnf install redhat-lsb-core ------- On SUSE ------- $ sudo zypper update $ sudo zypper install lsb-core

Get Linux Distribution Information

Once installed, try to run the lsb_release command again.

To get the list of available options you can refer to the man page or «-h» flag.

$ man lsb_release $ lsb_release -h

To check the description, about your distribution use the ‘-d’ flag.

To check the version information using the ‘-r’ flag.

$ lsb_release -r Release: 20.04 

Every distribution comes with a code name. For example, Ubuntu 20.04 comes with the name “Focal Fossa”. To get the name use the ‘-c’ flag.

$ lsb_release -c Codename: focal 

You can get all the information by using the ‘-a’ flag.

If you look at the output so far it is in key-value pair. You can just display the value alone by using the ‘-s’ flag.

$ lsb_release -i Distributor ID: Ubuntu $ lsb_release -is Ubuntu 

That’s it for this article. The lsb_release is a simple command to get information about your distribution.

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How to get Linux distribution name and version?

You might want to edit the title to make it clear the question is about doing it from C source, not as a script writer or user at the command line.

@Kolob Those were most emphatically not «more sensible» for this question; I have rolled back your change.

9 Answers 9

+1 this finally was «standardized» among the distro’s. Go back far enough though and this file doesn’t exist, instead each distro put their own file like /etc/redhat-release.

This will only work on LSB compliant Linux distributions, but is not guaranteed to work on non-compliant distributions. OTOH, it will also work on other LSB compliant non-Linux Unices. E.g. I’m pretty sure it won’t work on Adroid.

Note that on e.g. Gentoo Linux lsb_release is not always present by default. I just checked, and it’s provided by an optional package sys-apps/lsb-release, currently not installed on my system.

Will lsb-release works on all the follow Distrubtions?: Debian / Ubuntu | Red Hat Enterprise / Fedora Linux / Suse Linux / Cent OS ?

on my system yields the following from the bash (terminal) prompt:

Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS 2.6.32-41-generic x86_64 

I believe uname -mr returns the version of the Linux Kernel, so ‘lsb_release -ds’ should be all you need for the release name and version, assuming the description format is consistent across releases. Thanks, I was wondering how you were supposed to use the short parameter, I was trying it ‘lsb_release -s’ and was wondering why it was failing. Cheers!

trying this way is an interesting one and less restrictive than lsb-release.

This is the best answer, to only retrieve the name of the distro one can do: cat /etc/*-release | grep ID | head -n1 | cut -d ‘=’ -f2

What’s the purpose of getting that information?

If you’re trying to detect some features or properties of the system (e.g. does it support some syscall or does it have some library), instead of relying on output of lsb_release you should either:

• try to use given features and fail gracefully (e.g. dlopen for libraries, syscall(2) for syscalls and so on)
• make it a part of your ./configure check if applicable (standard FOSS way of automatically recognizing system features/properties)

Note that the first way above applies even if your software is binary-only.

 dl = dlopen(module_path, RTLD_LAZY); if (!dl) < fprintf(stderr, "Failed to open module: %s\n", module_path); return; >funcptr = dlsym(dl, module_function); if (!funcptr) < fprintf(stderr, "Failed to find symbol: %s\n", module_function); return; >funcptr(); dlclose(dl); 

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Best way to find the OS name and version on a Unix/Linux platform

But it does not seem to be the best solution, as LSB_RELEASE support is no longer for RHEL 7.

Is there a way that will work on any Unix or Linux platform?

uname is in most unix environments and guaranteed to be on every LSB compliant linux distro: refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_2.0.1/LSB-Core/LSB-Core/…

@Niraj — By reading the manpage linux.die.net/man/1/uname and grokking its output (assuming it is supported in RH6.5) . either way there is no (single) portable way to get this because it is mostly irrelevant info. Portable programs should probe for required features, not use some whitelist of prechecked distros.

10 Answers 10

This work fine for all Linux environments.

$ cat /etc/*-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS" 

$ cat /etc/*-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="12.04.4 LTS, Precise Pangolin" ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu precise (12.04.4 LTS)" VERSION_ID="12.04" 

$ cat /etc/*-release Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago) Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.5 (Santiago) 

#!/bin/sh # Detects which OS and if it is Linux then it will detect which Linux # Distribution. OS=`uname -s` REV=`uname -r` MACH=`uname -m` GetVersionFromFile() < VERSION=`cat $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*VERSION.*=\ // ` >if [ "$" = "SunOS" ] ; then OS=Solaris ARCH=`uname -p` OSSTR="$ $($ `uname -v`)" elif [ "$" = "AIX" ] ; then OSSTR="$ `oslevel` (`oslevel -r`)" elif [ "$" = "Linux" ] ; then KERNEL=`uname -r` if [ -f /etc/redhat-release ] ; then DIST='RedHat' PSUEDONAME=`cat /etc/redhat-release | sed s/.*\(// | sed s/\)//` REV=`cat /etc/redhat-release | sed s/.*release\ // | sed s/\ .*//` elif [ -f /etc/SuSE-release ] ; then DIST=`cat /etc/SuSE-release | tr "\n" ' '| sed s/VERSION.*//` REV=`cat /etc/SuSE-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*=\ //` elif [ -f /etc/mandrake-release ] ; then DIST='Mandrake' PSUEDONAME=`cat /etc/mandrake-release | sed s/.*\(// | sed s/\)//` REV=`cat /etc/mandrake-release | sed s/.*release\ // | sed s/\ .*//` elif [ -f /etc/debian_version ] ; then DIST="Debian `cat /etc/debian_version`" REV="" fi if [ -f /etc/UnitedLinux-release ] ; then DIST="$[`cat /etc/UnitedLinux-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/VERSION.*//`]" fi OSSTR="$ $ $($ $ $)" fi echo $

The script is useful but for linux it is showing ==Linux RedHat version(Final 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64 x86_64) .my redhat version is 6.5 but it is not showing in output ?

I tested on RHEL6.3 It is showing output as Linux RedHat 6.3(Santiago 2.6.32-279.22.1.el6.x86_64 x86_64)

Following command worked out for me nicely. It gives you the OS name and version.

The «lsb_release» command provides a certain Linux Standard Base (LSB) and distribution-specific information.

So using the below command we can get the Operating system name and operating system version.

«lsb_release -a«

This command gives you a description of your operating system:

In every distribution, it has different files, so I list the most common ones:

---- CentOS Linux distribution `cat /proc/version` ---- Debian Linux distribution `cat /etc/debian_version` ---- Redhat Linux distribution `cat /etc/redhat-release` ---- Ubuntu Linux distribution `cat /etc/issue` or `cat /etc/lsb-release` 

In the last one, /etc/issue didn’t exist, so I tried the second one and it returned the right answer.

With quotes:

cat /etc/*-release | grep "PRETTY_NAME" | sed 's/PRETTY_NAME=//g' 

Without quotes:

cat /etc/*-release | grep "PRETTY_NAME" | sed 's/PRETTY_NAME=//g' | sed 's/"//g' 

@PeterMortensen in /etc/*-release file original value is stored with double quotes. if you want to save it in database most probably you would want to remove those double quotes as well. 🙂

My own take at @kvivek’s script, with more easily machine parsable output:

#!/bin/sh # Outputs OS Name, Version & misc. info in a machine-readable way. # See also NeoFetch for a more professional and elaborate bash script: # https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch SEP="," PRINT_HEADER=false print_help() < echo "`basename $0` - Outputs OS Name, Version & misc. info" echo "in a machine-readable way." echo echo "Usage:" echo " `basename $0` [OPTIONS]" echo "Options:" echo " -h, --help print this help message" echo " -n, --names print a header line, naming the fields" echo " -s, --separator SEP overrides the default field-separator ('$SEP') with the supplied one" ># parse command-line args while [ $# -gt 0 ] do arg="$1" shift # past switch case "$" in -h|--help) print_help exit 0 ;; -n|--names) PRINT_HEADER=true ;; -s|--separator) SEP="$1" shift # past value ;; *) # non-/unknown option echo "Unknown switch '$arg'" >&2 print_help ;; esac done OS=`uname -s` DIST="N/A" REV=`uname -r` MACH=`uname -m` PSUEDONAME="N/A" GetVersionFromFile() < VERSION=`cat $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*VERSION.*=\ // ` >if [ "$" = "SunOS" ] ; then DIST=Solaris DIST_VER=`uname -v` # also: cat /etc/release elif [ "$" = "AIX" ] ; then DIST="$" DIST_VER=`oslevel -r` elif [ "$" = "Linux" ] ; then if [ -f /etc/redhat-release ] ; then DIST='RedHat' PSUEDONAME=`sed -e 's/.*\(//' -e 's/\)//' /etc/redhat-release ` DIST_VER=`sed -e 's/.*release\ //' -e 's/\ .*//' /etc/redhat-release ` elif [ -f /etc/SuSE-release ] ; then DIST=`cat /etc/SuSE-release | tr "\n" ' '| sed s/VERSION.*//` DIST_VER=`cat /etc/SuSE-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*=\ //` elif [ -f /etc/mandrake-release ] ; then DIST='Mandrake' PSUEDONAME=`sed -e 's/.*\(//' -e 's/\)//' /etc/mandrake-release` DIST_VER=`sed -e 's/.*release\ //' -e 's/\ .*//' /etc/mandrake-release` elif [ -f /etc/debian_version ] ; then DIST="Debian" DIST_VER=`cat /etc/debian_version` PSUEDONAME=`lsb_release -a 2> /dev/null | grep '^Codename:' | sed -e 's/.*[[:space:]]//'` #elif [ -f /etc/gentoo-release ] ; then #TODO #elif [ -f /etc/slackware-version ] ; then #TODO elif [ -f /etc/issue ] ; then # We use this indirection because /etc/issue may look like # "Debian GNU/Linux 10 \n \l" ISSUE=`cat /etc/issue` ISSUE=`echo -e "$" | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]\+$//'` DIST=`echo -e "$" | sed -e 's/[[:space:]].*//'` DIST_VER=`echo -e "$" | sed -e 's/.*[[:space:]]//'` fi if [ -f /etc/UnitedLinux-release ] ; then DIST="$[`cat /etc/UnitedLinux-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/VERSION.*//`]" fi # NOTE `sed -e 's/.*(//' -e 's/).*//' /proc/version` # is an option that worked ~ 2010 and earlier fi if $PRINT_HEADER then echo "OS$Distribution$Distribution-Version$Pseudo-Name$Kernel-Revision$Machine-Architecture" fi echo "$$$$$$$$$$$" 

NOTE: Only tested on Debian 11

Example Runs

No args

Linux,Debian,10.0,buster,4.19.0-5-amd64,x86_64 

Header with names and custom separator

OS | Distribution | Distribution-Version | Pseudo-Name | Kernel-Revision | Machine-Architecture Linux | Debian | 10.0 | buster | 4.19.0-5-amd64 | x86_64 

Filtered output

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