How to See the Pretty Linux Version

The easiest and simplest way to see the Linux distribution name and the version number is also the one that works on almost every type of Linux. Just open up a terminal and type in the following:

cat /etc/issue

You’ll be presented with output similar to the screenshot at the beginning of this article, which will look something like this:

Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

If you need more information you can use a different command, although it may not work on every distro out there, but it definitely works on the major ones. Just like before, open a terminal and type in the following:

cat /etc/*release

This will give you something more like this next screenshot, and you can see that not only do you have the release information, but you also get to see the codename and even the URL. What’s actually happening here is that on Ubuntu there is a /etc/os-release file, but on some other versions there might be something like /etc/redhat-release or another name entirely. By using the * in the command we’re just outputting the contents of any of them to the console.

How to See the Kernel Version

The version of the distribution you are running is actually a completely different thing than the version of the Linux kernel. You can easily see that version number by opening a terminal and typing in the following:

uname -r

How to Tell Whether You Are Using a 64-bit Kernel

You could probably already tell in the last screenshot that we’re using the 64 bit kernel with the x86_64 text, but the easiest thing to do is use this command from the terminal, which is the same command as before, but with -a for “all” instead of -r for “kernel release.”

uname -a

In this screenshot you can tell that we’re running the x86_64 version of Linux, which means 64-bit. If you were running 32-bit Linux, which you really shouldn’t be doing on a server, it would say “i386” or “i686” instead.