Like every VPS addict it is quite normal to forget which version of an operating system you are running especially if it is a server that you haven’t logged onto for a long time.

In other cases, you may simply be administering quite a few servers with different versions of operating systems and you may not necessary remember what version of Debian is installed on a particular system. Whatever the reason is, we will learn how to check the version of Debian that is running using only the command line.

so without further ado…..

Terminal commands that shows the Debian Version

There are many ways to find the version, here I will show two different ways. Feel free to post more ways in the comment section.

If you only need the version number the easiest way is to execute the following command

You should get a result like this:

There you have it, the server is running Debian 7.6!

Another command, that also gives a bit more information is

You should get a result like:

To find the Kernel version use the ‘uname‘ command. Using it without parameters will only print out ‘Linux’ and if you didn’t know that you were running Linux you are in trouble 🙂

prints all Kernel information

prints your kernel version which is useful for installing things like the kernel headers, for example:

Do you know more ways to get the OS version from the command line? Post a comment with your suggestions!