Linux Distribution - a Linux OS platform information API

The ld (for: Linux Distribution) package 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. 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](https://bugs.python.org/issue1322) for more information.

The ld 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.

## Installation

`shell pip install ld `

For dev:

`shell pip install https://github.com/nir0s/ld/archive/master.tar.gz `

## Python and Distribution Support

The ld package is supported on Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.4 and 3.5, and on any Linux distribution that provides one or more of the data sources used by this package.

This package is currently tested on Python 2.6, 2.7 and 3.5, with test data that mimics the exact behavior of the data sources of the following Linux distributions:

• Arch Linux

• CentOS 5/7

• Debian 8

• Exherbo

• Fedora 19/23

• KVM for IBM z Systems 1

• Mageia 5

• openSUSE Leap 42

• Oracle Linux Server 7

• RHEL 6/7

• Slackware 14

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

• Ubuntu 14

## Usage

` python >>> import ld >>> ld.linux_distribution(full_distribution_name=False) '('centos', '7.1.1503', 'Core')' `

Several more functions are available. For a complete description of the API, see the [latest API documentation](http://ld.readthedocs.org/en/latest/).