How to Check Ubuntu Version

An Ubuntu comes up with the exclusive series of Codenames in every new release. These names are related to the creatures, in addition to an adjective for any impressive word. May be due to this, you might not be able to remember the name and sometimes it’s version. It’s not necessary to have a reason to know anything, it can be just for the sake of knowledge.

By default, the Unity mode appears when you open up the Ubuntu 14.04. From this you are not able to look at the full version of Ubuntu, the only choice you have is to use the Terminal.

Steps to Check Ubuntu version

Step 1: If you want to know the description of Operating system with the released version, then type “lsb_release -d” where ‘d’ stands for description and then press enter.

The LSB is an abbreviated form of Linux Standard base, it’s a package that is used to provide support to all the modules including the third party software.

Step 2: The above command will list the name of the OS you are using as well as its version. Look at the figure below. “lsb_release [options]” states the information associated with specific distribution of Linux.

Step 3: Interested to know only the code name assigned to the version you are using, then write “lsb_release -c” and press enter.

Step 4: I have installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, so my system code name would be “trusty”. With every new release Ubuntu community comes up with the codenames associated to it.

For the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, full codename is “trusty tahr” where ‘trusty’ stands for reliable and ‘tahr’ is the name of the wild goat,  found in the Southern Asia.

Step 5: The previous commands are for the specific purpose, now if you want to know the details in brief,  type “lsb_release -a”.

Step 6: I got all the details regarding the distributor, description, release and codename as shown in the figure below.

Step 7: Other alternative to find out the description only is through “cat /etc/issue.net”.

Step 8: As you can see in the figure below, the name of OS and its version is displayed.

Step 9: To get the same result, there is a one more command which is “cat /etc/issue”.

Step 10: You can verify if, the command works well or not. In my case it does well as shown in the window below.

Step 11: Lastly, I want to introduce you with the one more command for all lsb details which is “cat /etc/lsb-release”, try it out.

Step 12: As an output of the previous command, all details can be seen in the figure shown below.

All these commands worked fine in my system, you can check out in yours.