[lsb-discuss] Re: New uname option to query exact OS distribution

[Wichmann, Mats D]

>I think the point was that there already *is* a command named lsb-
>release (try it- it's there in Fedora 2 at least). 

Yup, on RH and related (Fedora) releases it's been around since
a post-release patch to 7.3.

>I for one don't see any reason to add a 'uname -d' if lsb-release is
>already specified. I imagine that it's easier for utilities to 
>check for the existence of the lsb-release executable than it is to
>check for uname's support of a -d flag.

The only concern is that most systems don't have it installed;
it takes either a conscious request by the sysadmin or installation
of a package that has a dependency on it, making it a far less
general solution than convincing uname to return more info.
Which I'm not sure I advocate - do we really want to encourage
more ways in which software can be "distro specific"?