Get linux version command

How do I find out what version of Linux I’m running?

Is there a way to determine what version (distribution & kernel version, I suppose) of Linux is running (from the command-line), that works on any Linux system?

I’d just like to point out for the record how stupid it is that this is a question which needs asking. This is really quite an indictment on the state of every linux distro.

9 Answers 9

The kernel is universally detected with uname :

$ uname -or 2.6.18-128.el5 GNU/Linux 

There really isn’t a cross-distribution way to determine what distribution and version you’re on. There have been attempts to make this consistent, but ultimately it varies, unfortunately. LSB tools provide this information, but ironically aren’t installed by default everywhere. Example on an Ubuntu 9.04 system with the lsb-release package installed:

$ lsb_release -irc Distributor ID: Ubuntu Release: 9.04 Codename: jaunty 

Otherwise, the closest widely-available method is checking /etc/something-release files. These exist on most of the common platforms, and on their derivatives (i.e., Red Hat and CentOS).

$ cat /etc/lsb-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=jaunty DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.04" 

But Debian has /etc/debian_version :

$ cat /etc/debian_version 5.0.2 

Fedora, Red Hat and CentOS have:

Fedora: $ cat /etc/fedora-release Fedora release 10 (Cambridge) Red Hat/older CentOS: $ cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 5.3 (Final) newer CentOS: $ cat /etc/centos-release CentOS Linux release 7.1.1503 (Core) 

$ cat /etc/gentoo-release Gentoo Base System release 1.12.11.1 

I don’t have a SUSE system available at the moment, but I believe it is /etc/SuSE-release .

Slackware has /etc/slackware-release and/or /etc/slackware-version .

Mandriva has /etc/mandriva-release .

For most of the popular distributions then,

will most often work. Stripped down and barebones «server» installations might not have the ‘release’ package for the distribution installed.

Additionally, two 3rd party programs you can use to automatically get this information are Ohai and Facter.

Note that many distributions have this kind of information in /etc/issue or /etc/motd , but some security policies and best practices indicate that these files should contain access notification banners.

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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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Get linux version command

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