Linux Operating System and Version, Regardless of Distibution

Question

I would like to know a linux command that can tell me the operating system and version regardless of what distribution I am using as it seems different distributions have a different way of doing this. That may make such a thing tricky but then again there may be a way and perhaps the community already has this.

Previous questions on this have elicited responses such as "these users have answered that" but then didn't give a link to the answer or indeed previous question, only the users who had ansked the question which makes finding the answer somewhat of a challenge. Other resposnes to similar questions have been specific to redhat or whatever and as such not an answer to my new question here.

Many thanks for any help provided.

Have you try using this command: uname -a – Romeo Ninov Feb 20 '15 at 12:18 — Romeo Ninov, Feb 20 '15 at 12:18
doesnt 'cat /etc/*release' help? – Raghuraman R Feb 20 '15 at 12:20 — Raghuraman R, Feb 20 '15 at 12:20

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 20 '15 at 12:46

1

You should be fine with:

cat /proc/version

answered Feb 20 '15 at 12:46

Petr

981

This only provides the kernel version. – jordanm Feb 20 '15 at 14:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 20 '15 at 13:36

0

You can use lsb_release -a which is already installed or available in most Linux distributions.

answered Feb 20 '15 at 13:36

noqqe

195

Linux Operating System and Version, Regardless of Distibution

2 Answers2