Howto know the linux distro version?

kumarkumar · 02-07-2007, 04:29 PM

In Windows you can right click on "My Computer" and select Properties where it will give the information about the Windows version, build etc.

What is the corresponding way to do this in any Linux distro??

reddazz · 02-07-2007, 04:40 PM

On most distros, you do "cat /etc/release" or "cat /etc/{DISTRONAME}-release".

cgjones · 02-07-2007, 04:40 PM

To find out info about the kernel, try this.
uname -a

Most distro's have a version file in /etc. For example, /etc/debian_version. You can cat it to see which version you are running.

Indiestory · 02-07-2007, 04:53 PM

i thought that there was a switch on uname that told you the distro ,but it turns out my host name was debian. Normally its just a check in /etc and you'll see something distro orientated

Samoth · 02-07-2007, 05:10 PM

For all you Gentoo users out there: /etc/gentoo-release. It only mentions the baselayout version though

Code:

rock thomas # cat /etc/gentoo-release
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.6
rock thomas #

emerge --info will tell you everything about your toolchain.

kumarkumar · 02-11-2007, 12:19 AM

Thanks reddazz, cgjones, Indiestory and Samoth for your replies.

I didn't want to know the kernel version but the distro version.
Actually I have a Mepis distro which doesn't have anything in /etc about version info.
I tried to cat but it didn't return anything.

rickh · 02-11-2007, 12:40 AM

I don't know if this will help you or not, but on my Debian system, I knew it said something about the OS when it started booting, so I typed:

$ dmesg | grep Debian

... and it returned, "Linux version 2.6.18-4-amd64 (Debian 2.6.18.dfsg.1-10) (waldi@debian.org) (gcc version 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)) #1 SMP Fri Feb 2 14:28:35 UTC 2007"