How To Know Which Linux Distribution You Are Using?

Here are a few ways to find out which linux distro you are using :

1. From the Boot Time messages

Fire up your favourite terminal program and type in the following

dmesg | head -1
The output would be similar to

Linux version 2.6.13-15-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 4.0.2 20050901 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux)) #1 Tue Sep 13 14:56:15 UTC 2005

2. Using /proc/version
In the terminal type

cat /proc/version
The output would be like

Linux version 2.6.13-15-default (geeko@buildhost) (gcc version 4.0.2 20050901 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux)) #1 Tue Sep 13 14:56:15 UTC 2005

3. Using /etc/issue
This method gives the most appropriate answer

cat /etc/issue
The output should be like

Welcome to SUSE LINUX 10.0 (i586) - Kernel \r (\l).

4. Using /etc/*-release

cat /etc/*-release

5. egrep '^[^#]*title' /boot/grub/menu.lst | grep -v 'memtest'

You may try this shell script to know about your Linux Distribution.

#!/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}