What version of Linux am I running?

c@c-H97N ~ $ uname -a

Linux c-H97N 4.4.0-53-generic #74-Ubuntu SMP Fri Dec 2 15:59:10 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

c@c-H97N ~ $ uname -r

4.4.0-53-generic

c@c-H97N ~ $ lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.

Distributor ID: LinuxMint

Description: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena

Release: 18.1

Codename: serena

c@c-H97N ~ $

This question keeps popping up, and while the last time I went down this road I was trying to find out whether I had the 32 or 64-bit version of the operating system, now I need to know the version-version. I only installed this thing a week or two ago, you'd think I'd remember, and I think I do, but do I really? With computers, thinking that you know something is often the prelude to a long, tedious, wild goose chase through a swamp filled with aligators. Better to find out for sure before you start hunting in the past for something that hasn't happened yet.

There are two commands in the above terminal session:

• uname
• lsb_release

The -a suffix I believe means all. You will notice that the -r suffix on the uname command returns a subset of what it returned with the -a suffix. There are probably other suffixes that can tell you all kinds of things, like what brand of undies your grandma wore, but we have enough for now, so we'll move on.

Reconstructing the terminal session so it was actual text (instead of a fuzzy screenshot) took some fiddling. I finally figured out that using the div tag instead of span would fill out the lines all the way across the page and make the black block contiguous.

Start by pasting the text from the terminal session. Highlight the first line and set the font, text color and background color. Now go into html mode, change the span tag to div.  Move the closing div tag to the end of the block of text, and presto, the whole block has white text on a black background.

Now you can highlight the prompt (c@c-H97N ~ $) and change the color(s) there.