Re: [lsb-discuss] Re: New uname option to query exact OS distribution

[Bruce Korb]

"Wichmann, Mats D" wrote:
> 
> >I think the point was that there already *is* a command named lsb-
> >release (try it- it's there in Fedora 2 at least).
> 
> Yup, on RH and related (Fedora) releases it's been around since
> a post-release patch to 7.3.
> 
> >I for one don't see any reason to add a 'uname -d' if lsb-release is
> >already specified. I imagine that it's easier for utilities to
> >check for the existence of the lsb-release executable than it is to
> >check for uname's support of a -d flag.
> 
> The only concern is that most systems don't have it installed;
> it takes either a conscious request by the sysadmin or installation
> of a package that has a dependency on it, making it a far less
> general solution than convincing uname to return more info.
> Which I'm not sure I advocate - do we really want to encourage
> more ways in which software can be "distro specific"?

Unfortunately, "distros" go in and modify things that the mere linux
kernel version number is inadequate to describe.  Using uname makes
more sense to me than grepping /etc/*??*-release for magic strings.  8-O !!
It still doesn't belong in the Austin group discussion list.