As well as many more that I can’t even remember. But it does not refer to Lunbuntu or the release. I guess that I have:
Lubuntu 22.04.3 LTS? I this correct? I have tried so many different commands and the thing that surprises me the most is that Lubuntu refuses to admit that it is Lubuntu! It doesn’t even show it in the Discover Software application/package manger or whatever it’s called.
Here is my question in a nutshell. Is there any terminal command I can use, as a universal tool for all distibutions, that will tell me the exact distribution and flavor/flavour?
Any help I receive would be very much appriciated. Cheers!
I used the --off option so I didn’t get the default graphic logo.
Lubuntu is a Ubuntu system, using the Ubuntu base packages, thus some tools will identify themselves as [running] Ubuntu; your installation media can be viewed on a Ubuntu system via installer logs (see /var/log/installer/media-info), but that is not universal.
No there isn’t one. If using Ubuntu, commands will be consistent for those systems, and very similar to Debian too, being its part of the same ‘stream’, but what packages & locations will differ if moving further afield (OpenSuSE, Fedora etc) though some will contain the same detail with minor differences (sorry I’m not going to turn on another system to provide evidence). If you move across to BSD; expect more differences.
Many of those differences are hard coded into tools like neofetch which allows easy comparison, but even it will have problems as details (locations & assumptions in the code) change over time, and the hardcoded nature of neofetch can be incorrect or outdated (thus misleading). I still feel it’s a useful tool (just don’t take it as gospel).
Guiverc, many thanks! This is just what I needed. This is the only program (I have found, no, you found) that will tell me the “flavor” and other very helpful things. Many thanks for your help.
I would have responded sooner but my Lubuntu computer had a major upset. It seems that I accidently removed the taskbar when I was trying to uninstal some “widgets” and couldn’t get it back.
[^(] is to avoid listing the desktop packages that are available but not installed “Installed: (none)”.
If you have Lubuntu, the package lubuntu-desktop should be listed.
If you want to know more details about your installed system (for example for debugging), you can install and run the Ubuntu Forum’s system-info script.
Thanks for the reply Sudodus, I haven’t been here in a few weeks. I still prefer “NeoFetch” because it has more information than any terminal command I’ve found. Cheers!
You can also try the command line tool inxi for system info. (Although I note it too doesn’t report “Lubuntu”, but “Ubuntu”.)
I can’t remember now if it comes pre-installed or if I installed it myself. You can always: sudo apt install inxi
You can add “suffixes” (can you tell I’m not a CLI expert?) like -b for detailed system info, or -A for just audio details, -G for just graphics details etc. And even -z for to exclude private info. (inxi -h for the full list of commands.)
Bartman, many thanks. This is good to know, and very quick and useful. I just tried it and it works nicely. I like having a “hard copy” or file for somehting that I want to know but has lots of information to remember. Cheers!
Pan4b, thanks. I have inxi and have use it and find it useful but it didn’t get me what I was looking for and that was the flavor of Ubuntu (Lubuntu) that I was using. I found that the small program, which can be run from the terminal also, NeoFetch comes in quite handy and I have since used it on other distros also. Cheers.
@JeffRedd You’re welcome. Yeah, inxi at least tells you the version but doesn’t differentiate Lubuntu from Ubuntu. No idea why Neofetch can pull that off but inxi can’t. I usually install both.
An example of an error was Fuduntu, which was hard coded in neofetch to report itself as a Ubuntu system (it wasn’t, being a Fedora based system). I reported the error to the developer of neofetch and the hard coding was altered so newer versions of neofetch report any user running it on the now defunct Fuduntu correctly.