Name distribution

[Ed Wilts]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 04:23:27AM +0800, John Summerfield wrote:
> On Thursday 02 December 2004 23:44, Ed Wilts wrote:
> > It also works for Tao - the file is symlink'ed to /etc/tao-release.
> > On Fedora, the file is a symlink to /etc/fedora-release.
> 
> However, there is no such file in debian, so if the answer is "yes,"
> we've not found the command yet.
> 
> I'd say "No," but I have a suspicion LSB requires some easy way of
> telling.

I thought the original poster wanted the answer on Red Hat systems.  To
the best of my knowledge, there is no consistent way of guaranteeing a
way across distributions to get the version number. I don't think there
ever will be either.  Sure, you can get the kernel version (and only
sort of, since hardly anybody uses a stock Linus kernel), but that's
about it.  After that, you should not really care anyway since what you
really want is the version of individual packages, not the overall
distro.  Anybody who checks for something like "heidelberg" and expects
to work is just asking for trouble.

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program