Python What OS am I running on

Question

What do I need to look at to see whether I m on Windows or Unix  etc

User · Answer

If you are running macOS X and run platform system   you get darwin because macOS X is built on Apple s Darwin OS  Darwin is the kernel of macOS X and is essentially macOS X without the GUI

User · Answer

Check the available tests with module platform and print the answer out for your system   import platform  print dir platform   for x in dir platform       if x 0  isalnum            try              result   getattr platform  x                print  platform   x      result         except TypeError              continue

User · Answer

How about a simple Enum implementation like the following  No need for external libs   import platform from enum import Enum class OS Enum       def checkPlatform osName           return osName lower     platform system   lower        MAC   checkPlatform  darwin       LINUX   checkPlatform  linux       WINDOWS   checkPlatform  windows     I haven t test this one   Simply you can access with Enum value  if OS LINUX value      print  Cool it is Linux     P S It is python3

User · Answer

You can look at the code in pyOSinfo which is part of the pip-date package  to get the most relevant OS information  as seen from your Python distribution    One of the most common reasons people want to check their OS is for terminal compatibility and if certain system commands are available  Unfortunately  the success of this checking is somewhat dependent on your python installation and OS  For example  uname is not available on most Windows python packages  The above python program will show you the output of the most commonly used built-in functions  already provided by os  sys  platform  site     So the best way to get only the essential code is looking at that as an example   I guess I could have just pasted it here  but that would not have been politically correct

User · Answer

Use platform system    Returns the system OS name  such as  Linux    Darwin    Java    Windows   An empty string is returned if the value cannot be determined   import platform system   platform system   lower    is windows   system     windows  is linux   system     linux  is mac   system     darwin

User · Answer

If you not looking for the kernel version etc  but looking for the linux distribution you may want to use the following   in python2 6     gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  print platform linux distribution     CentOS Linux    6 0    Final    gt  gt  gt  print platform linux distribution   0  CentOS Linux  gt  gt  gt  print platform linux distribution   1  6 0   in python2 4   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  print platform dist     centos    6 0    Final    gt  gt  gt  print platform dist   0  centos  gt  gt  gt  print platform dist   1  6 0   Obviously  this will work only if you are running this on linux  If you want to have more generic script across platforms  you can mix this with code samples given in other answers

User · Answer

Dang -- lbrandy beat me to the punch  but that doesn t mean I can t provide you with the system results for Vista    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os name  nt   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform system    Windows   gt  gt  gt  platform release    Vista       and I can   t believe no one   s posted one for Windows 10 yet    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os name  nt   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform system    Windows   gt  gt  gt  platform release    10

User · Answer

Short Story  Use platform system    It returns Windows  Linux or Darwin  for OSX    Long Story  There are 3 ways to get OS in Python  each with its own pro and cons   Method 1   gt  gt  gt  import sys  gt  gt  gt  sys platform  win32     could be  linux    linux2   darwin    freebsd8  etc   How this works  source   Internally it calls OS APIs to get name of the OS as defined by OS  See here for various OS-specific values   Pro  No magic  low level   Con  OS version dependent  so best not to use directly    Method 2   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os name  nt     for Linux and Mac it prints  posix    How this works  source   Internally it checks if python has OS-specific modules called posix or nt    Pro  Simple to check if posix OS  Con  no differentiation between Linux or OSX   Method 3   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform system    Windows    for Linux it prints  Linux   Mac it prints   Darwin    How this works  source   Internally it will eventually call internal OS APIs  get OS version-specific name like  win32  or  win16  or  linux1  and then normalize to more generic names like  Windows  or  Linux  or  Darwin  by applying several heuristics    Pro  Best portable way for Windows  OSX and Linux   Con  Python folks must keep normalization heuristic up to date   Summary   If you want to check if OS is Windows or Linux or OSX then the most reliable way is platform system    If you want to make OS-specific calls but via built-in Python modules posix or nt then use os name  If you want to get raw OS name as supplied by OS itself then use sys platform

User · Answer

You can also use sys platform if you already have imported sys and you don t want to import another module   gt  gt  gt  import sys  gt  gt  gt  sys platform  linux2

User · Answer

try this   import os  os uname     and you can make it    info os uname   info 0  info 1

User · Answer

How about a new answer   import psutil psutil MACOS    True  OSX is deprecated  psutil WINDOWS  False psutil LINUX    False    This would be the output if I was using MACOS

User · Answer

For the record here s the results on Mac    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os name  posix   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform system    Darwin   gt  gt  gt  platform release    8 11 1

User · Answer

Interesting results on windows 8    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os name  nt   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform system    Windows   gt  gt  gt  platform release    post2008Server    Edit  That s a bug

User · Answer

usr bin python3 2  def cls        from subprocess import call     from platform import system      os   system       if os     Linux           call  clear   shell   True      elif os     Windows           call  cls   shell   True

User · Answer

in the same vein      import platform is windows  platform system   lower   find  win    gt  -1   if is windows   lv dll LV dll  my so dll dll   else            lv dll LV dll    my so dll so

User · Answer

Watch out if you re on Windows with Cygwin where os name is posix    gt  gt  gt  import os  platform  gt  gt  gt  print os name posix  gt  gt  gt  print platform system   CYGWIN NT-6 3-WOW

User · Answer

Sample code to differentiate OS s using python    from sys import platform as  platform  if  platform     linux  or  platform     linux2         linux elif  platform     darwin         MAC OS X elif  platform     win32         Windows elif  platform     win64         Windows 64-bit

User · Answer

This solution works for both python and jython   module os identify py   import platform import os    This module contains functions to determine the basic type of   OS we are running on    Contrary to the functions in the  os  and  platform  modules    these allow to identify the actual basic OS    no matter whether running on the  python  or  jython  interpreter   def is linux        try          platform linux distribution           return True     except          return False  def is windows        try          platform win32 ver           return True     except          return False  def is mac        try          platform mac ver           return True     except          return False  def name        if is linux            return  Linux      elif is windows            return  Windows      elif is mac            return  Mac      else          return   lt unknown gt      Use like this   import os identify  print  My OS      os identify name

User · Answer

gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os name  posix   gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform system    Linux   gt  gt  gt  platform release    2 6 22-15-generic    The output of platform system   is as follows    Linux  Linux Mac  Darwin Windows  Windows   See  platform     Access to underlying platform   s identifying data

User · Answer

I know this is an old question but I believe that my answer is one that might be helpful to some people who are looking for an easy  simple to understand pythonic way to detect OS in their code  Tested on python3 7  from sys import platform   class UnsupportedPlatform Exception       pass   if  linux  in platform      print  linux   elif  darwin  in platform      print  mac   elif  win  in platform      print  windows   else      raise UnsupportedPlatform

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I am using the WLST tool that comes with weblogic  and it doesn t implement the platform package    wls  offline gt  import os wls  offline gt  print os name java  wls  offline gt  import sys wls  offline gt  print sys platform  java1 5 0 11    Apart from patching the system javaos py  issue with os system   on windows 2003 with jdk1 5   which I can t do  I have to use weblogic out of the box   this is what I use   def iswindows      os   java lang System getProperty   os name      return  win  in os lower

User · Answer

For Jython the only way to get os name I found is to check os name Java property  tried with sys  os and platform modules for Jython 2 5 3 on WinXP    def get os platform           return platform name  but for Jython it uses os name Java property        ver   sys platform lower       if ver startswith  java            import java lang         ver   java lang System getProperty  os name   lower       print  platform   s     ver       return ver

User · Answer

If you want user readable data but still detailed  you can use platform platform      gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform platform    Linux-3 3 0-8 fc16 x86 64-x86 64-with-fedora-16-Verne    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   n    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  Ubuntu 12 04 server for example gives   Python version    2 6 5  r265 79063  Oct  1 2012  22 04 36       GCC 4 4 3    dist    Ubuntu    10 04    lucid   linux distribution    Ubuntu    10 04    lucid   system  Linux machine  x86 64 platform  Linux-2 6 32-32-server-x86 64-with-Ubuntu-10 04-lucid uname    Linux    xxx    2 6 32-32-server     62-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 20 22 07 43 UTC 2011    x86 64       version   62-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 20 22 07 43 UTC 2011 mac ver

User · Answer

You can also use only platform module without importing os module to get all the information    gt  gt  gt  import platform  gt  gt  gt  platform os name  posix   gt  gt  gt  platform uname     Darwin    mainframe local    15 3 0    Darwin Kernel Version 15 3 0  Thu Dec 10 18 40 58 PST 2015  root xnu-3248 30 4 1 RELEASE X86 64    x86 64    i386     A nice and tidy layout for reporting purpose can be achieved using this line   for i in zip   system   node   release   version   machine   processor   platform uname    print i 0      i 1    That gives this output   system   Darwin node   mainframe local release   15 3 0 version   Darwin Kernel Version 15 3 0  Thu Dec 10 18 40 58 PST 2015  root xnu-3248 30 4 1 RELEASE X86 64 machine   x86 64 processor   i386   What is missing usually is the operating system version but you should know if you are running windows  linux or mac a platform indipendent way is to use this test   In     for i in  platform linux distribution   platform mac ver   platform win32 ver                  if i 0                    print  Version    i 0

User · Answer

I started a bit more systematic listing of what values you can expect using the various modules  feel free to edit and add your system    Linux  64bit    WSL  os name                     posix sys platform                linux platform system             Linux sysconfig get platform      linux-x86 64 platform machine            x86 64 platform architecture         64bit          tried with archlinux and mint  got same results on python2 sys platform is suffixed by kernel version  e g  linux2  everything else stays identical same output on Windows Subsystem for Linux  tried with ubuntu 18 04 LTS   except platform architecture       64bit    ELF     WINDOWS  64bit    with 32bit column running in the 32bit subsystem   official python installer   64bit                     32bit -------------------------   -----                     ----- os name                     nt                        nt sys platform                win32                     win32 platform system             Windows                   Windows sysconfig get platform      win-amd64                 win32 platform machine            AMD64                     AMD64 platform architecture         64bit    WindowsPE        64bit    WindowsPE    msys2                       64bit                     32bit -----                       -----                     ----- os name                     posix                     posix sys platform                msys                      msys platform system             MSYS NT-10 0              MSYS NT-10 0-WOW sysconfig get platform      msys-2 11 2-x86 64        msys-2 11 2-i686 platform machine            x86 64                    i686 platform architecture         64bit    WindowsPE        32bit    WindowsPE    msys2                       mingw-w64-x86 64-python3  mingw-w64-i686-python3 -----                       ------------------------  ---------------------- os name                     nt                        nt sys platform                win32                     win32 platform system             Windows                   Windows sysconfig get platform      mingw                     mingw platform machine            AMD64                     AMD64 platform architecture         64bit    WindowsPE        32bit    WindowsPE    cygwin                      64bit                     32bit ------                      -----                     ----- os name                     posix                     posix sys platform                cygwin                    cygwin platform system             CYGWIN NT-10 0            CYGWIN NT-10 0-WOW sysconfig get platform      cygwin-3 0 1-x86 64       cygwin-3 0 1-i686 platform machine            x86 64                    i686 platform architecture         64bit    WindowsPE        32bit    WindowsPE      Some remarks    there is also distutils util get platform   which is identical to  sysconfig get platform anaconda on windows is same as official python windows installer I don t have a Mac nor a true 32bit system and was not motivated to do it online   To compare with your system  simply run this script  and please append results here if missing     from   future   import print function import os import sys import platform import sysconfig  print  os name                          os name  print  sys platform                     sys platform  print  platform system                  platform system    print  sysconfig get platform           sysconfig get platform    print  platform machine                 platform machine    print  platform architecture            platform architecture

User · Answer

I am late to the game but  just in case anybody needs it  this a function I use to make adjustments on my code so it runs on Windows  Linux and MacOs   import sys def get os osoptions   linux   linux   Windows   win   macos   darwin                 get OS to allow code specifics                opsys    k for k in osoptions keys   if sys platform lower   find osoptions k  lower       -1      try          return opsys 0      except          return  unknown OS

[python] Python: What OS am I running on?

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