Is there a (preferably efficient, i.e. without executing binaries and parsing their outputs) way of detecting the Linux distribution in Java? As far as I know, System provides os.name, os.arch and os.version, which don’t seem to help. For a typical Ubuntu installation they get these values:
os.name: amd64
os.arch: Linux
os.version: 3.19.0-28-generic
What I need is whether the it’s debian based, redhat family or others.
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Answer
I think parsing a file is the way to go under Linux. You could of course do it only once.
The correct file to find such information on Linux would be /etc/*-release, which on my machine gives the following output:
$ cat /etc/*-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="14.04.3 LTS, Trusty Tahr" ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS" VERSION_ID="14.04" HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/" SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/" BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
You could then parse ID_LIKE variable which would give you the exact information you need (I can’t guarantee that but I suppose it will always be in the 8th line on every Linux distribution).