How to get Linux distribution name and version?

Question

In Windows I read the registry key SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProductName to get the full name and version of the OS.

But in Linux, the code

struct utsname ver;
uname(&ver);
retVal = ver.sysname;

returns the string linux, not Ubuntu 9.04.

How can I get the Linux distribution name and version?

Stenopetalous

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. – Synergistic

@DarenW: the question has tags C/C++ – Stenopetalous

See also #264790 – Kirkwall

@Stenopetalous I've updated it to have more sensible tags – Fellmonger

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

Answer 1

Try:

cat /etc/lsb-release

You can also try

lsb_release -a

Or:

cat /proc/version

Tortuous

+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. – Muth

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. – Algophobia

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. – Byrann

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

lsb-release does not exist on CentOS 7.4. – Coad

Answer 2

lsb_release -ds ; uname -mr

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

Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS
2.6.32-41-generic x86_64

Fluting

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! – Batish

Answer 3

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

$ cat /etc/*-release

Feature

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 – Wembley

Answer 4

Not sure I followed exactly what you're after but I think you just want the "all" flag on uname:

uname -a

Mysticism

Unfortunately, on Fedora 11 output of "uname -a" if Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.i586 #1 SMP Sat Aug 15 00:44:39 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux – Stenopetalous

Answer 5

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.

Some code examples:

  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);

You can even gracefully test for CPU opcodes support, read e.g. http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/flash-lahf.html , http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=29789

Mezuzah

Answer 6

/etc/os-release is available on at least both CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 16.04, which makes it more cross-platform than lsb_release (not on CentOS) or /etc/system-release (not on Ubuntu).

$ cat /etc/os-release

Example:

NAME=Fedora
VERSION="17 (Beefy Miracle)"
ID=fedora
VERSION_ID=17
PRETTY_NAME="Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;34"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:17"
HOME_URL="https://fedoraproject.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"

Coad

Answer 7

Usually:

cat /etc/issue

Respectable

/etc/issue is what is displayed on a terminal before you log in. Reading the file itself would normally give you something like "This is \n.\O (\s \m \r) \t ". Not very useful! It's a piece of freeform text which could contain anything in other words. – Shorten

This gives Kernel \r on an \m (\l) on RedHat's distros indeed. /etc/*release is better! – Wembley

Answer 8

1. cat release file to display Linux distro version

   $ cat /etc/*-release
   

2. lsb_release will return Linux distribution name and version

   $ lsb_release -a 
   

3. hostnamectl will return Linux distribution name and version

   $ hostnamectl
   

4. To print certain system information

   $ uname -a
   or 
     -s, --kernel-name        print the kernel name
     -n, --nodename           print the network node hostname
     -r, --kernel-release     print the kernel release
     -v, --kernel-version     print the kernel version
     -m, --machine            print the machine hardware name
     -p, --processor          print the processor type (non-portable)
     -i, --hardware-platform  print the hardware platform (non-portable)
     -o, --operating-system   print the operating system
   

5. To find out Static hostname, Chassis, Mchine ID, Virtualization, OS, Kernel, Architecture

   $ cat /proc/version
   

Staghound

Answer 9

This command filters just one line where the name of the distro is kept:

cat /etc/*-release | grep ID | head -n1 | cut -d '=' -f2

Wembley