Subject: Re: bug#9339: Feature suggestion --distribution

From: Bob Proulx <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:49:06 -0600

severity 9339 wishlist
tags 9339 + notabug wontfix
thanks

rcb wrote:
> Please, add an option to show distro info. Example:
> 
> #uname -d
> ubuntu v.10.04
> #uname --distribution
> slackware v. 13.37
> 
> Thanks for taking your time to read this. If you need me to ask this
> suggestion in other channel, please let me know.

The 'uname' command is one of those very old legacy commands from the
old, old Unix era before the current networking and before almost any
attempt at making systems inter-operable.  As such it is a terrible
command.  It is inconsistently implemented on different systems.  It
has limitations and issues that don't really apply to the current
state of things anymore.  The only portable use is to call it without
option arguments and then depending upon what it returns possibly call
it again with system specific options.  As such I really don't think
it is good to expand its use by adding more to it.

But the real reason I would be opposed to this is that the LSB
commands already implement this behavior.  Let's not duplicate the
functionality elsewhere.

  $ lsb_release --id
  Distributor ID: SUSE LINUX

  $ lsb_release --id
  Distributor ID: Debian

  $ lsb_release --id
  Distributor ID: Ubuntu

  http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/lsbrelease.html

Bob