Linux Version Information

I can't believe there is no general
command that tells you what version of Linux
you are running. I suppose this is because
Linux is based on Unix and when Unix started,
there was no other version of Unix. If there
is only one version of Unix in existence, there's
not all that much to find out about.

Now times have changed. There are many versions
of Unix out there. Or more to the point, there
are many versions of Linux out there.

Here's an article that describes where to get
Linux version Information for your particular
distribution:

Determining Linux Version

Here are 3 simple steps that should
give you Linux version information:

1. cd /etc
2. ls *release
3. Observe the file
   name that suggests your
   version of Linux
4. cat filename

I suppose that these steps are simple
enough that no one has bothered to
umbrella all of this under one command.

Ok. I just tried the above steps and
they did not work. It seems that the
word release is not as universal
as the above web page would suggest. It's
probably outdated.

I'll try the above steps with the
word version instead:

1. cd /etc
2. ls *version
3. Observe the file
   name that suggests your
   version of Linux
4. cat filename

Ok. For my Debian release, the
word version works. Here's
what my screen looks like:

myprompt:/etc$ ls *version
debian_version
myprompt:/etc$ cat debian_version 
5.0.8
myprompt:/etc$ 

I'm using the word version
in a loose way here. I really mean
the release in combination with the
distribution. However, that's too
clumsy to say over and over again.

There's a lot of fiction in brevity.

Ed Abbott