How to decipher Linux release info

There’s a lot more to identifying a Linux release than citing a simple version number. Even a quick look at the output from the uname command can tell you that. What is all of that information, and what does it tell you?

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the output from the uname command along with release descriptions provided by some other commands and files.

Using uname

A lot of information is displayed whenever you issue the command uname -a in a Linux system terminal window. That’s because that little “a” tells the man command that you want to see all of the output that the command is able to provide. The resultant display will tell you a lot of different things about the system. In fact, each chunk of information displayed tells you something different about the system.

As an example, the uname -a output might look like this:

$ uname -a
Linux dragonfly 5.4.0-37-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 3 18:57:02 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

While it’s probably not much of a temptation, you could retrieve this very same information by using a command that includes all of the uname options in the proper order:

$ uname -snmrvpio
Linux dragonfly 5.4.0-37-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 3 18:57:02 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

To break this long string of information into separate chunks, you can use a for loop like this that runs through each of the options:

$ for option in s n m r v p i o; do echo -n "$option: "; uname -$option; done
s: Linux
n: dragonfly
m: x86_64
r: 5.4.0-37-generic
v: #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 3 18:57:02 UTC 2020
p: x86_64
i: x86_64
o: GNU/Linux

That loops shows what information is provided by which option. The uname man page provides descriptions for each option. Here’s a list:

Linux –- kernel name (option “s”)
dragonfly –- nodename (option “n”)
x86_64 –- machine hardware name (option “m”)
5.4.0-37-generic –- kernel release (option “r”)
#41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 3 18:57:02 UTC 2020 -- kernel version (option “v”)
x86_64 –- processor (option “p”)
x86_64 –- hardware platform (option “i”)
GNU/Linux –- operating system (option “o”)

To delve a little more deeply into the information being displayed, take a closer look at the kernel release data shown. That 5.4.0-37 in the 4th line is not just a string of arbitrary numbers. Each numeric value is significant.

• 5 is the kernel version
• 4 signifies the major revision
• 0 indicates the minor revision
• 37 represents the most recent patch

In addition, that #41 in the 5th line of the loop output (kernel version) indicates that this release has been compiled 41 times.

Individual options can be useful when and if you want to display only one piece of all the available information. For example, the command uname -n can tell you just the name of the system and uname -r will show you just the kernel release. These and other options can be useful when you’re taking inventory of your servers or building scripts.

The same variety of information will be provided by the uname -a command when working on Red Hat systems. Here’s an example:

$ uname -a
Linux fruitfly 4.18.0-107.el8.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Jun 14 13:46:34 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Distribution release information

If you need to know what version of a distribution you’re running, the uname output isn’t going to help you much. The kernel version is, after all, not the same as the distribution version. For that information, you can use the lsb_release -r command on Ubuntu and other Debian-based systems and display the contents of the /etc/redhat-release file for Red Hat.

For Debian systems:

$ lsb_release -r
Release: 20.04

For Red Hat and related systems:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.1 Beta (Ootpa)

Using /proc/version

The /proc/version file can also provide information on your Linux release. The information provided in this file has a lot in common with the uname -a output. Here are some examples.

On Ubuntu:

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 5.4.0-37-generic (buildd@lcy01-amd64-001) (gcc version 9.3.0 (Ubuntu 9.3.0-10ubuntu2)) #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 3 18:57:02 UTC 2020

On RedHat:

$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 4.18.0-107.el8.x86_64 (mockbuild@x86-vm-09.build.eng.bos.redhat.com) (gcc version 8.3.1 20190507 (Red Hat 8.3.1-4) (GCC)) #1 SMP Fri Jun 14 13:46:34 UTC 2019

Wrap-Up

Linux systems provide a lot of information on the kernel and distributions installed. You just have to know where or how to look and make sense of what it means.