Find out your distribution

To find out your distribution, open a console and issue:

cat /etc/*ele* /etc/*ersion*

As an example, here is the output of SUSE Linux 11.1:

tweedleburg:~ # cat /etc/*ele*
openSUSE 11.1 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11.1
LSB_VERSION="core-2.0-noarch:core-3.2-noarch:core-2.0-x86_64:core-3.2-x86_64"
cat: /etc/lsb-release.d: Is a directory

If you get a Debian release, you have Debian or Ubuntu. To find out if you have Debian or Ubuntu, issue

lsb_release -rd

To find out your kernel, use

uname -a

To find out the gcc that compiled the kernel, use

cat /proc/version