Question by tedhyu: How do I figure out what operating system when using linux operating system?
I have a few linux questions. When I’m on a terminal, what do I type to figure out the operating system?

Secondly, what do I type to determine how many bits (32-bit or 64-bit) are the computer?

Thanx.

Best answer:

Answer by dcbevins
Typing uname -a will give you the linux kernel you are running. It may give information as to 32/64 bit. It will not give distro information.

Each distro handles this diffrently.

You can try these:
cat /proc/version
cat /etc/issue
lsb_release -a
egrep ‘^[^#]*title’ /boot/grub/menu.lst | grep -v ‘memtest’
cat /etc/*-release

Specifit to certain distro’s try looking inside these files:

Novell SuSE
/etc/SuSE-release

Red Hat
/etc/redhat-release, /etc/redhat_version

Fedora
/etc/fedora-release

Slackware
/etc/slackware-release, /etc/slackware-version

Debian
/etc/debian_release, /etc/debian_version,

Mandrake
/etc/mandrake-release

Yellow dog
/etc/yellowdog-release

Sun JDS
/etc/sun-release

Solaris/Sparc
/etc/release

Gentoo
/etc/gentoo-release

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