How to figure out what Linux/Unix distro you are on

Question

Is there a way to tell which Linux flavor and version on the machine I am on running? This may be a strange question, but if I'm given a machine and connect to the monitor and the keyboard and if the machine is already running in run level 3, how do you tell what is running on the machine.

Answer 1

uname -s (OS name) is what you're looking for, uname -a will give you more details, like the OS version & hardware platform.

If uname -s returns Linux you then need to turn to something Linux-specific to find out what distribution you're running (lsb_release -a does this, as Zypher mentioned).

Answer 2

You can do cat /etc/issue the problem with doing this is that sysadmins can and will change this file.

or use lsb_release -a (more reliable and portable) This is a better method and is supported on any modern OS Linux Distro.

Answer 3

You can try running:

uname -a

Answer 4

I use this command to find the name of the distro:

cat /etc/*release*

And this command to find the number of cpu cores (and approximate speed):

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep bogomips

This for the kernel/machine:

uname -a

And this to see what's up in general (requires htop):

htop