How to find your Ubuntu release

There are several ways to find out which release of Ubuntu you’re using. But the most easy way is to make use of the lsb_release (LSB stands for Linux Standard Base) command which pulls it’s info from ‘/etc/lsb-release’. This is a command line utility, so you’ll need to open a Terminal in which you can enter the commands. You can use the -a switch to see all information, as the example below shows. The -h switch will display a list of all possible options.

$ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 9.04 Release: 9.04 Codename: jaunty $

The lsb_release command does not show what architecture version you’re using. To find this out, you can use the uname command. The next example will show a 64-bit architecture.

$ uname -m x86_64 $

The find you wich kernel release you’re currently using you can issue a uname -r. Use the -a switch if you want all information from the uname command displayed at once.

$ uname -r 2.6.28-11-generic $

See ‘man uname’ for more details on using the uname.