I work with a wide variety of client server deployments, and sometimes it isn’t obvious(via uname) what distribution and version a server is running. Here is a quick list of common files which contain that information:
Debian /etc/debian_release, /etc/debian_version, Fedora /etc/fedora-release Gentoo /etc/gentoo-release Mandrake /etc/mandrake-release Novell SUSE /etc/SUSE-release Red Hat /etc/redhat-release, /etc/redhat_version Slackware /etc/slackware-release, /etc/slackware-version Solaris/Sparc /etc/release Sun JDS /etc/sun-release Ubuntu /etc/lsb-release UnitedLinux /etc/UnitedLinux-release Yellow dog /etc/yellowdog-release
