Answers to: How can I programatically determine the Linux distribution?

Answer by amcohen

amcohen — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 04:03:34 -0400

Here's a skeletan of a Korn/Bash function to do it:

function get_distro { if [[ -r /etc/redhat-relase ]]; then set -- $(cat /etc/redhat-relase) case $1 in Red) echo Redhat;; Fedora) echo Fedora;; CentOS) echo CentOS;; *) echo ??? esac elif [[ -r /etc/debian_version ]]; then echo Debian else echo UNKNOWN fi }

Answer by Jazz

Jazz — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:04:20 -0400

Here's one. You could enhance this script by first using the other ways of finding out which distribution is running before using uname. A combination of those commands should do the trick for any distribution.

Comment by Jazz on DMon's answer

Jazz — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:58:12 -0400

Furthermore not all distributions report something useful using lsb_release. My ArchLinux configuration prints "n/a" for example.

Comment by DMon on DMon's answer

DMon — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:20:02 -0400

CentOS 6 does. Just tried it on there. But you are correct not every Distro does it the same however lsb seems to be more common in the newest batch of updates.

Comment by fardelian on DMon's answer

fardelian — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:58:53 -0400

That only works on some distributions. For example, CentOS doesn't have the lsb_release executable.

Answer by DMon

DMon — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:05:34 -0400

Not sure what all you want it to show.

$ lsb_release -is

will give you just the Distribution