Distro - a Linux OS platform information API

distro (for: Linux Distribution) provides information about the Linux distribution it runs on, such as a reliable machine-readable ID, or version information.

It is a renewed alternative implementation for Python's original platform.linux_distribution function, but it also provides much more functionality which isn't necessarily Python bound like a command-line interface.

Installation

Installation of the latest released version from PyPI:

pip install distro

Installation of the latest development version:

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

Usage

$ distro
Name: Antergos Linux
Version: 2015.10 (ISO-Rolling)
Codename: ISO-Rolling

$ distro -j
{
    "codename": "ISO-Rolling", 
    "id": "antergos", 
    "like": "arch", 
    "version": "16.9", 
    "version_parts": {
        "build_number": "", 
        "major": "16", 
        "minor": "9"
    }
}


$ python
>>> import distro
>>> distro.linux_distribution(full_distribution_name=False)
'('centos', '7.1.1503', 'Core')'

Documentation

On top of the aforementioned API, several more functions are available. For a complete description of the API, see the latest API documentation.

Background

An alternative implementation became necessary because Python 3.5 deprecated this function, and Python 3.7 is expected to remove it altogether. Its predecessor function platform.dist was already deprecated since Python 2.6 and is also expected to be removed in Python 3.7. Still, there are many cases in which access to that information is needed. See Python issue 1322 for more information.

The distro package implements a robust and inclusive way of retrieving the information about a Linux distribution based on new standards and old methods, namely from these data sources (from high to low precedence):

• The os-release file /etc/os-release, if present.
• The output of the lsb_release command, if available.
• The distro release file (/etc/*(-|_)(release|version)), if present.

Python and Distribution Support

distro is supported and tested on Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3+ and PyPy and on any Linux distribution that provides one or more of the data sources covered.

This package is tested with test data that mimics the exact behavior of the data sources of a number of Linux distributions.

Testing

git clone [email protected]:nir0s/distro.git
cd distro
pip install tox
tox

Contributions

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

See CONTRIBUTIONS for contribution info.

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