Check Linux distribution name

Question

I have to get the Linux distribution name from a Python script. There is a dist method in the platform module:

import platform
platform.dist()

But under my Arch Linux it returns:

>>> platform.dist()
('', '', '')

Why? How can I get the name?

PS. I have to check whether the distribution is Debian-based.

Update: I found here Python site, that dist() is deprecated since 2.6.

>>> platform.linux_distribution()
('', '', '')

@Kimvais I mean about getting name exactly from python script without parsing any files, only standart methods. — Max Frai, May 03 '10 at 07:51
what does `uname -a` return on Arch? platform.py is 1600 lines of trying everything they could think of to distinguish various systems; it is a huge pile of heuristics. Arch also appears to be based only on itself, no other distro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux — msw, May 03 '10 at 08:00
What does `lsb_release -is` return under Arch? If `platform.dist()` gives you no usable data maybe you can call `subprocess.check_output(["lsb_release","-is"])` instead. — panzi, Jul 13 '14 at 18:06
For googlers, here's a related question: [How do I detect the Ubuntu version?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19694536/how-do-i-detect-the-ubuntu-version) — blong, Dec 08 '15 at 18:48
Possible duplicate of [Python: What OS am I running on?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1854/python-what-os-am-i-running-on) — user7610, Sep 09 '19 at 12:01

score 19 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 20 '17 at 13:06

19

Here's what I found:

platform.linux_distribution
Tries to determine the name of the Linux OS distribution name.

It says platform.dist is deprecated since 2.6, you have to use platform.linux_distribution in Python 2 (but it is also deprecated in Python 3.5).

edited Oct 20 '17 at 13:06

Vadim Kotov

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answered May 03 '10 at 07:45

nc3b

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Unfortunately, `platform.linux_distribution` has been removed in python 3.8, but there's the third party package [`distro`](https://pypi.org/project/distro/). – d-k-bo Oct 15 '21 at 19:17

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 21 '17 at 11:36

This works for me on Ubuntu:

('Ubuntu', '10.04', 'lucid')

I then used strace to find out what exactly the platform module is doing to find the distribution, and it is this part:

open("/etc/lsb-release", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=102, ...}) = 0
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=102, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb76b1000
read(3, "DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu\nDISTRIB_RELEAS"..., 8192) = 102
read(3, "", 4096)                       = 0
read(3, "", 8192)                       = 0
close(3)                                = 0

So, there is /etc/lsb-release containing this information, which comes from Ubuntu's Debian base-files package.

Note that sometimes the file is `/etc/os-release`. – panzi Jul 13 '14 at 18:02 — panzi, Jul 13 '14 at 18:02

nir0s · Answer 3 · 2020-11-21T17:30:15.673

The reason because of which platform.linux_distribution does not identify some distributions is the non-standardized way distributions provide version-related information on themselves.

I've written a package called distro (now used by pip) which aims to replace distro.linux_distribution. It works on many distributions which might return weird or empty tuples when using platform.

https://github.com/nir0s/distro (distro, on pypi)

It provides a much more elaborate API to retrieve distribution related information.

$ python
Python 2.7.12 (default, Nov  7 2016, 11:55:55) 
[GCC 6.2.1 20160830] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import distro
>>> distro.linux_distribution()
(u'Antergos Linux', '', u'ARCHCODE')

By the way, platform.linux_distribution is to be removed in Python 3.7.

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 09 '20 at 09:46

6

To get a linux distribution name in python:

import distro
print(distro.id())

I am running Arch Linux, so this will return:

arch

For available distro id values see documenteation: https://distro.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

answered Jul 09 '20 at 09:46

Ashark

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score 5 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 21 '17 at 11:39

It works here. And no, Arch Linux is not Debian-based.

>>> import platform
>>> platform.dist()
('SuSE', '11.2', 'x86_64')

So Python does not know how to get the Arch Linux release information, and it has hardcoded looking for /etc/redhat-release and /etc/SuSE-release.

platform.dist() is an obsolete function. You should use platform.linux_distribution()

Actually, on my system it yields a different result:

>>> platform.linux_distribution()
('openSUSE ', '11.2', 'x86_64')

platform.linux_distribution() looks in /etc files containing "release" or "version" as string. It also looks in the standard LSB release file. If at the end that did not work, it resorts to a _dist_try_harder function which tries to get the information from other places.

So it is up to Arch Linux to provide a standard LSB release information or to patch Python to use their "way".

Jabba · Answer 6 · 2015-05-30T19:24:06.180

2

This worked for me under Ubuntu and Manjaro:

def get_distro():
    """
    Name of your Linux distro (in lowercase).
    """
    with open("/etc/issue") as f:
        return f.read().lower().split()[0]

edited May 30 '15 at 19:24

answered May 30 '15 at 18:50

Jabba

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not good idea , `/etc/issue` is for show welcome line on standard console and very often is modified by user/admin. Standard way to detect modern distro is parse `/etc/lsb-release` or better `/etc/os-release` – mimi.vx Mar 13 '17 at 12:05
for CentOS lsb-release is not available per default, so the /etc/issue works for me on more distributions as lsb-release ... – looki Aug 01 '19 at 08:30

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 04 '16 at 22:11

Python 2 does not properly detect Arch Linux. This has been fixed in Python 3.3+, but was never back-ported to Python 2. Here are a couple of official bug reports:

https://bugs.python.org/issue20454
https://bugs.python.org/issue11678

A workaround for this issue in Python 2 is fairly simple. You just need to tell the platform module that "arch" is a supported distribution:

>>> import platform
>>> platform.linux_distribution(supported_dists=platform._supported_dists + ('arch',))
('arch', '', '')

Note that Arch Linux is a rolling release, so it does not have a version or id.

The supported_dists argument is documented here, although I don't find the documentation very clear. You don't want to overwrite _supported_dists because then your code will only work on Arch Linux. You want to append to the tuple.

In fact, if you print out the value of platform._supported_dists, you'll see that the only difference between Python 2.7.12 and Python 3.5.1 is the addition of ('arch', 'mageia'). Fun fact: you can also append 'system' for platform detection on Amazon Linux.

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 15 '20 at 20:08

2

Here:

import sys, platform
print(sys.platform, platform.platform())

OUT [1]: linux Linux-5.4.44-1-MANJARO-x86_64-with-glibc2.2.5

answered Jul 15 '20 at 20:08

Pyzard

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score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 21 '17 at 11:38

0

Two options for you:

Use import platform platform.linux_distribution() # Something like ('Ubuntu', '9.10', 'karmic')
Or you could just read the contents of /etc/debian_version ("squeeze/sid") or /etc/lsb-release which would give:
```
DISTRIB_ID=Ubunt
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=karmic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.10"
```

edited Oct 21 '17 at 11:38

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 03 '10 at 07:49

coffeetocode

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Unfortunately, the first option does not work on Arch Linux. I don't have access to Arch at the moment, so I can't test the second option. – Adam Stewart Nov 04 '16 at 22:16

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 09 '19 at 11:37

If you want user readable data but still detailed, you can use platform.platform()

>>> import platform
>>> platform.platform()
'Linux-3.3.0-8.fc16.x86_64-x86_64-with-fedora-16-Verne'

Here's a few different possible calls you can make to identify where you are

import platform
import sys

def linux_distribution():
  try:
    return platform.linux_distribution()
  except:
    return "N/A"

print("""Python version: %s
dist: %s
linux_distribution: %s
system: %s
machine: %s
platform: %s
uname: %s
version: %s
mac_ver: %s
""" % (
sys.version.split('\n'),
str(platform.dist()),
linux_distribution(),
platform.system(),
platform.machine(),
platform.platform(),
platform.uname(),
platform.version(),
platform.mac_ver(),
))

The outputs of this script ran on a few different systems (Linux, Windows, Solaris, MacOS) and architectures (x86, x64, Itanium, power pc, sparc) is available here: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/OS_flavor_name_version

@code_dredd yes, you should probably not use it or rely on it being there, since it's already in a try/except block here this code will not break after it is removed ;) — Jens Timmerman, Nov 29 '19 at 13:33

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 21 '21 at 08:05

None of the above platform answers work with latest Python versions. I've tested with Python 3.8.10. I found following methods instead.

Using platform:

>>> import platform
>>> platform.version()
'#29~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Aug 11 15:58:17 UTC 2021'

Using distro:

>>> import distro
>>> distro.id()
'ubuntu'

Ref: https://docs.python.org/3/library/platform.html#platform.linux_distribution

score -1 · Answer 12 · answered May 03 '10 at 08:05

-1

You'll probably have to resort to:

if platform.linux_distribution() == ('', '', ''):
    # do something specific to look for Arch

or you could always augment lib/python2.6/platform.py and send in your changes.

answered May 03 '10 at 08:05

msw

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This type of comparison is dangerous because Arch Linux is not the only distribution that `platform` cannot detect. Amazon Linux also results in an empty tuple. – Adam Stewart Nov 04 '16 at 22:13

Check Linux distribution name

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