Command
 

How do you get the distro you are using and what version that distro is?

For example, Suse 9.2
Debian
Red Hat 9.2

and whatever else. I would like to be able to get on a box and immediatly tell what distro I'm working with.

lqiso.org

linuxiso.org

uname -a
will give you the kernel version and name of the machine for a quick answer

there also appears to be a file in /etc/ that contains the actual version number of the distro, but of course each distro seems to name this file differently

/etc/debian_version
cat debian_version
3.1

/etc/redhat-release
cat redhat-release
Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike)

Those are the only 2 I have at hand.. but you should be able to locate it easy enough.

Theres no standard method or file to retrieve the data from, you need to do as farslayer says and look for a release/version file in /etc. The file for slackware is /etc/slackware-version

Oops, I've understood the question wrong. I thought the question was how to get linux... I should read more carefully :o

cat /etc/issue
for RH/Fedora for release ver

The
cat /etc/issue
Really works well. Thank you everyone.