Python 3.5 deprecates platform.linux_distribution() and Python 3.7 removes it altogether.

Still, there are many cases in which you need access to that information.

see https://bugs.python.org/issue1322 for more information.

THIS IS WIP! It is is no means production ready. See caveats section.

ld (linux distribution) attempts to implement a more robust and inclusive way of retrieving the distro related information based on new standards and old methods - namely:

• /etc/os-release
• the output of the lsb_release -a command
• /etc/*-release

ld is tested on Python 2.6, 2.7 and 3.5

pip install ld

For dev:

pip install https://github.com/nir0s/ld/archive/master.tar.gz

The following distributions are tested (this is by no means an exhaustive list of supported distros as any distro adhering to the same standards should work):

• Arch
• CentOS 5/7
• Debian 8
• Exherbo
• Fedora 23
• OpenSuSE 42
• Oracle 7
• Red Hat 6/7
• Slackware 14
• Ubuntu 14

import ld

ld.linux_distribution(full_distribution_name=False)

'('centos', '7.1.1503', 'Core')'

ld exposes the following parmeters:

Attempts to implement Python's platform.linux_distribution().

If full_distribution_name is set to True, the name will be returned instead of the id.

Returns the id of the distribution - e.g. ubuntu, fedora, debian...

The id should be machine-readable.

• os-release['ID']
• lsb-release['Distributor ID'] in lowercase.
• *-release file name prefix (e.g. redhat from redhat-release)

Returns the name of the distribution - e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, Ubuntu, openSUSE Leap

• os-release['NAME']
• lsb-release['Distributor ID']
• first part of the first line of the *-release file

Returns a prettified name of the distribution - e.g. openSUSE Leap 42.1 (x86_64), CentOS Linux 7 (Core), Oracle Linux Server 7.1

• os-release['PRETTY_NAME']
• lsb-release['Description']
• first part of the first line of the *-release file + ld.version(pretty=True)

Returns the version (i.e. release) of the distribution - e.g. .. well.. the version number.

• os-release['VERSION_ID']
• lsb-release['Release']
• second part of the first line of the *-release file

ld.minor_version(), ld.major_version() and ld.build_number() are also exposed and are based on ld.version_parts().

Returns a prettified version of the distribution - e.g. 7 (Core), 23 (Twenty Three)

• os-release['VERSION']
• lsb-release['Release'] + ld.codename() (if codename exists)
• second part of the first line of the *-release file + ld.codename() (if codename exists)

Returns the os-release['ID_LIKE'] field - e.g. suse, rhel fedora, debian

Returns the distribution version's codename - e.g. Core, trusty, Maipo

Note that not all distributions provide a codename for their releases.

• The second part of os-release['VERSION'] (between parentheses or after a comma)
• lsb-release['Codename']
• third part of the first line of the *-release files (between parentheses)

Returns the base distribution - e.g. arch, gentoo, rhel

constants.py contains the table in which each distro is mapped to its base distro.

Matching is one first by ld.name() and then by ld.like()

Returns a dictionary with machine readable info of the distribution. This is just an aggregate of the rest of the information.

Example:

{
    'id': 'rhel',
    'version': '7.0',
    'version_parts': {
        'major': '7',
        'minor': '0',
        'build_number': ''
    },
    'like': 'fedora',
    'base': 'fedora'
}

• ld.os_release_info() - returns a dictionary containing the info found in /etc/os-release
• ld.lsb_release_info() - returns a dictionary containing the info parsed from lsb_release -a
• ld.distro_release_info() - returns a dictionary containing the info found in '/etc/*-release' matching your distribution.

You can also get the information from some of the release files directly. This allows you to retrieve information that is not exposed via the API.

For instance, RHEL 7's os-release file contains the following:

REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7"

ld.get_os_release_attr('redhat_bugzilla_product') will get the value for that field.

ld.get_lsb_release_attr() and ld.get_dist_release_attr() are also exposed.

• os-release is a new standard for providing distro-specific information. This is the first file looked at when attempting to retrieve the distro specific info.
• lsb_release is found by default in Ubuntu. We also check for lsb_release -a to retrieve the information from it if it is available.
• *-release - We fallback to the release file specific to the distribution (e.g. /etc/redhat-release, /etc/centos-release) and try to extract information (like the version and codename) from it. This is done by looking up the a release file and parsing it.

contributors, please read.

• There will be some consistency issues depending on the system you're running. For instance, os-release returns rhel as an id while redhat-release returns redhat. This means that either the user will have to act upon "either redhat or rhel" or we'll have to decide on one of them and then convert in-code.
• codename of the same distro might be different in some cases. For instance, os-release returns Trusty Tahr for Ubuntu 14.04 while lsb_release -a returns trusty. This again means that we'll either have to tell the user to check codename.lower().startswith(WHATEVER) or find a consistent way of dealing with codenames. All in all, relying on version numbers is preferred.

git clone git@github.com:nir0s/ld.git
cd ld
pip install tox
tox

Pull requests are always welcome to deal with specific distributions or just for general merriment.

Reference implementations for supporting additional distributions and file formats can be found here:

• https://github.com/saltstack/salt/blob/develop/salt/grains/core.py#L1172
• https://github.com/chef/ohai/blob/master/lib/ohai/plugins/linux/platform.rb