How can I find the version of Ubuntu that is installed?

Question

I installed some version of Ubuntu on my VMware, but I don't know what version exactly it is. How can I find it out?

Solution 1

Your version of Ubuntu can be determined by opening System Settings and then opening the System Info or Details (from 12.04) section:

This page will also tell you whether you have the 32- or 64-bit version of Ubuntu installed, as well as what processor and graphics you have, the amount of RAM installed, and your disk capacity.

You can get this info from a terminal with the command:

lsb_release -a

Credit in part to htorque and WarriorIng64

[Note: for versions before 11.10, e.g. 11.04 this is not available this way, but see Roland's answer below for workable option (basically use the 'System Monitor' icon instead]

Solution 2

Apart from:

• lsb_release -a and

• cat /etc/*release ,

you can also see the version in the GNOME System Monitor (press Alt + F2, type gnome-system-monitor, and hit Enter):

Solution 3

In Ubuntu 11.10 onwards, the version of Ubuntu installed can be found by entering System Settings > System Info (in newer versions like 14.04 LTS, this tab might be called Details instead):

This page will also tell you whether you have the 32- or 64-bit version of Ubuntu installed, as well as what processor and graphics you have, the amount of RAM installed, and your disk capacity.

Solution 4

$ lsb_release -r
Release:        10.04

$ lsb_release -c
Codename:       lucid

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release:        10.04
Codename:       lucid

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid

"LSB" means Linux Standard Base, a joint project of several Linux distributions. Its goal is to develop and promote a set of open standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions.

Solution 5

Quite a few ways -

On the command line:

1. lsb_release -a ▸ exact release name, version, etc.
2. cat /etc/issue ▸ formal release name
3. cat /etc/issue.net ▸ cleaner version of previous one
4. cat /etc/debian_version ▸ will give you the Debian code name
5. cat /proc/version ▸ will give you quite a lot of information about your kernel, when was it compiled, which GCC version has been used, etc.
6. uname -a ▸ will tell you about your kernel information, plus architecture (i386 ▸ 32 bit, x86_64 ▸ 64 bit)

If you like a GUI more than the command line, the System page on System Monitor gnome-system-monitor application should give you more than enough information. Release name, architecture variant, cores in the system, RAM available, and the space available on the root file system.

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Comments

[Admin]

Also related: askubuntu.com/questions/5675/…

[Admin]

None of the GUI answers are applicable to Ubuntu Studio. Does this mean it would not be a duplicate question to pose it again but specify that the answer be for Ubuntu Studio?

[Admin]

I'm using Linux Mint and 'cat /etc/linuxmint/info' works too.

[Jjed]

It's considered bad practice to recommend commandline first when there's a GUI option. Plus, that answer is, like, six months too stale. ;P

[htorque]

The user asked for a terminal command. Providing a GUI answer is a bonus, not a priority. :)

[Todd Baur]

Perhaps this answer got hijacked by the top answer at some point - but isn't this now just an exact duplicate of the top answer?

[Knowledge Cube]

@icc97 Thanks for letting me know. My answer apparently did get "hijacked" (in fact, I made this screenshot myself and it was just taken for the other answer's edit).

[Knowledge Cube]

Please also give me credit, at least for the screenshot, which I took myself and used originally in this answer. (You can verify for yourself that a large part of this answer was a direct copy-and-paste of my answer by looking at the edit logs.)

[Todd Baur]

Duly upvoted yours and removed my upvote for the other, pretty shocking behaviour

[devav2]

Will this command differentiate the alpha/beta/prod release?

[Anon]

no longer relevant. The tab has been removed.

[landroni]

How do you access this window from the command-line? I'm on Xubuntu and this doesn't seem installed.

[Knowledge Cube]

A bit complex, but I guess it works.

[Avinash Raj]

guess? no, it will surely work.

[Vinod Tigadi]

The command line commands very handy. Because on one of my server, the lsb_release wasn't getting identified only. It's the uname and cat /etc/issue that helped me. And I realized that it was CentOS. Thanks

[GhostCat]

I like this answer better, as that "cat" tells me that I am running 16.04.1 ... whereas the UIs just say 16.04 ...

[Wes Williams]

Great! cat /etc/lsb-release is the only variant that also works in the official Ubuntu Docker base image.