Long time ago I have described an easy way to check Ubuntu release.
Today I want to expand this topic a little bit further and mention about additional switch to check an upstream release, which can be very useful at times.
As I have already described in an earlier blog post, you can check current release using the following command.
$ lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: LinuxMint Description: Linux Mint 17 Qiana Release: 17 Codename: qiana
To check upstream release add an additional --upstream or the equivalent -u switch, but know that it does not apply to every Linux distribution, but to derivative ones.
$ lsb_release -a -u No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty
As a side note, currently supported switches are presented below.
$ lsb_release --help Usage: lsb_release [options] Options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -v, --version show LSB modules this system supports -u, --upstream show upstream LSB data -i, --id show distributor ID -d, --description show description of this distribution -r, --release show release number of this distribution -c, --codename show code name of this distribution -a, --all show all of the above information -s, --short show requested information in short format