Overview
Knowing what operating system your computer uses, and what version of that operating system, is important to help protect your computer and data from security threats.
Instructions
Instructions for determining what operating system version you are running are available on the Microsoft (for the Windows operating system) and Apple (for the macOS operating system) websites. A terminal command should be run to determine what version of Linux you are running, but due to the number of Linux distributions, this command differs from one distribution to the next.
- Windows
- Macintosh
- Linux - run the command
cat /etc/os-release for your distribution of Linux. Common examples include
- Red Hat:
$ cat /etc/redhat-release
- CentOS:
$ cat /etc/centos-release
- Fedora:
$ cat /etc/fedora-release
- Debian:
$ cat /etc/debian_version
- Ubuntu:
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
- Linux Mint:
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
- Gentoo:
$ cat /etc/gentoo-release
- SuSE:
$ cat /etc/SuSE-release