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

This work fine for all Linux environments.

#!/bin/sh cat /etc/*-release 

In Ubuntu:

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

Or Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin):

$ 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" 

In RHEL:

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

Or use this script:

#!/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 $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*VERSION.*=\ // ` } if [ "${OS}" = "SunOS" ] ; then OS=Solaris ARCH=`uname -p` OSSTR="${OS} ${REV}(${ARCH} `uname -v`)" elif [ "${OS}" = "AIX" ] ; then OSSTR="${OS} `oslevel` (`oslevel -r`)" elif [ "${OS}" = "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="${DIST}[`cat /etc/UnitedLinux-release | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/VERSION.*//`]" fi OSSTR="${OS} ${DIST} ${REV}(${PSUEDONAME} ${KERNEL} ${MACH})" fi echo ${OSSTR} 

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

lsb_release -a 

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:

cat /etc/os-release

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' 

gives output as:

"CentOS Linux 7 (Core)" 

Without quotes:

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

gives output as:

CentOS Linux 7 (Core) 

This is the best and easiest way to find the OS name and kernel version. It is also supported in all Linux flavors.

VERSION=`cat /proc/version` echo $VERSION 

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="$1" shift # past switch case "${arg}" 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 $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed s/.*VERSION.*=\ // ` } if [ "${OS}" = "SunOS" ] ; then DIST=Solaris DIST_VER=`uname -v` # also: cat /etc/release elif [ "${OS}" = "AIX" ] ; then DIST="${OS}" DIST_VER=`oslevel -r` elif [ "${OS}" = "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 "${ISSUE}" | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]\+$//'` DIST=`echo -e "${ISSUE}" | sed -e 's/[[:space:]].*//'` DIST_VER=`echo -e "${ISSUE}" | sed -e 's/.*[[:space:]]//'` fi if [ -f /etc/UnitedLinux-release ] ; then DIST="${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 $PRINT_HEADER then echo "OS${SEP}Distribution${SEP}Distribution-Version${SEP}Pseudo-Name${SEP}Kernel-Revision${SEP}Machine-Architecture" fi echo "${OS}${SEP}${DIST}${SEP}${DIST_VER}${SEP}${PSUEDONAME}${SEP}${REV}${SEP}${MACH}" 

NOTE: Only tested on Debian 11

Example Runs

No args

osInfo 

output:

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

Header with names and custom separator

osInfo --names -s "\t| " 

output:

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

Filtered output

osInfo | awk -e 'BEGIN { FS=","; } { print $2 " " $3 " (" $4 ")" }' 

output:

Debian 10.0 (buster) 

With perl and Linux::Distribution, the cleanest solution for an old problem:

#!/bin/sh perl -e ' use Linux::Distribution qw(distribution_name distribution_version); my $linux = Linux::Distribution->new; if(my $distro = $linux->distribution_name()) { my $version = $linux->distribution_version(); print "you are running $distro"; print " version $version" if $version; print "\n"; } else { print "distribution unknown\n"; } ' 

I prepared the following commands to find concise information about a Linux system:

clear echo "\n----------OS Information------------" hostnamectl | grep "Static hostname:" hostnamectl | tail -n 3 echo "\n----------Memory Information------------" cat /proc/meminfo | grep MemTotal echo "\n----------CPU Information------------" echo -n "Number of core(s): " cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "processor" | wc -l cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "model name" | head -n 1 echo "\n----------Disk Information------------" echo -n "Total Size: " df -h --total | tail -n 1| awk '{print $2}' echo -n "Used: " df -h --total | tail -n 1| awk '{print $3}' echo -n "Available: " df -h --total | tail -n 1| awk '{print $4}' echo "\n-------------------------------------\n" 

Copy and paste in an sh file, like info.sh, and then run it using command sh info.sh.

This one is simple:

DISTRIBUTION=$(lsb_release -si) echo $DISTRIBUTION 

output:

Ubuntu