cross platform - How can I find the current OS in Python?

Question

This question already has answers here:

Answer 1

If you want user readable data but still detailed, you can use platform.platform()

>>> import platform
>>> platform.platform()
'Linux-3.3.0-8.fc16.x86_64-x86_64-with-fedora-16-Verne'

platform also has some other useful methods:

>>> platform.system()
'Windows'
>>> platform.release()
'XP'
>>> platform.version()
'5.1.2600'

Here's a few different possible calls you can make to identify where you are

import platform
import sys

def linux_distribution():
  try:
    return platform.linux_distribution()
  except:
    return "N/A"

print("""Python version: %s
dist: %s
linux_distribution: %s
system: %s
machine: %s
platform: %s
uname: %s
version: %s
mac_ver: %s
""" % (
sys.version.split('
'),
str(platform.dist()),
linux_distribution(),
platform.system(),
platform.machine(),
platform.platform(),
platform.uname(),
platform.version(),
platform.mac_ver(),
))

The outputs of this script ran on a few different systems (Linux, Windows, Solaris, MacOS) and architectures (x86, x64, Itanium, power pc, sparc) is available here: https://github.com/hpcugent/easybuild/wiki/OS_flavor_name_version

e.g. Solaris on sparc gave:

Python version: ['2.6.4 (r264:75706, Aug  4 2010, 16:53:32) [C]']
dist: ('', '', '')
linux_distribution: ('', '', '')
system: SunOS
machine: sun4u
platform: SunOS-5.9-sun4u-sparc-32bit-ELF
uname: ('SunOS', 'xxx', '5.9', 'Generic_122300-60', 'sun4u', 'sparc')
version: Generic_122300-60
mac_ver: ('', ('', '', ''), '')

or MacOS on M1

Python version: ['2.7.16 (default, Dec 21 2020, 23:00:36) ', '[GCC Apple LLVM 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.30.4) [+internal-os, ptrauth-isa=sign+stri'] 
dist: ('', '', '') 
linux_distribution: ('', '', '') 
system: Darwin 
machine: arm64 
platform: Darwin-20.3.0-arm64-arm-64bit 
uname: ('Darwin', 'Nautilus.local', '20.3.0', 'Darwin Kernel Version 20.3.0: Thu Jan 21 00:06:51 PST 2021; root:xnu-7195.81.3~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8101', 'arm64', 'arm') 
version: Darwin Kernel Version 20.3.0: Thu Jan 21 00:06:51 PST 2021; root:xnu-7195.81.3~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T8101 
mac_ver: ('10.16', ('', '', ''), 'arm64')