How to Determine the Operating System Programmatically

Using Python

You can gather a lot of information about the platform where Python is running by using the standard library platform.

import platform

platform.system()

>>> 'Linux'

platform.system() Returns the system/OS name, such as ‘Linux’, ‘Darwin’, ‘Java’, ‘Windows’. An empty string is returned if the value cannot be determined.

Python Documentation

Darwin refers to macOS.

Using the click module

click integrates a useful function to find application folders.

Very often, you want to open a configuration file that belongs to your application. However, different operating systems store these configuration files in different locations depending on their standards. Click provides a get_app_dir() function which returns the most appropriate location for per-user config files for your application depending on the OS.

Example usage:

import os
import click
import ConfigParser

APP_NAME = 'My Application'

def read_config():
    cfg = os.path.join(click.get_app_dir(APP_NAME), 'config.ini')
    parser = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
    parser.read([cfg])
    rv = {}
    for section in parser.sections():
        for key, value in parser.items(section):
            rv[f"{section}.{key}"] = value
    return rv

source: https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/8.1.x/utils/#finding-application-folders

Using shell commands

To determine the operating system you’re on, try the following commands:

Unix-based Systems (Linux, macOS, etc.)

uname -a

This command provides information about the system, including the operating system name and version.

Linux Systems

cat /etc/os-release

This command displays detailed information about the distribution and version.

Windows Systems

ver

This command displays the Windows version you’re running.

Distinguishing Linux and macOS

lsb_release -a 2>/dev/null || sw_vers 2>/dev/null

This command attempts to run lsb_release (common on Linux) and SW_vers (used on macOS) to display information about the OS.