“What version of ubuntu do I have”. Probably, that’s a question you ask yourself when you have long been never updated your Ubuntu. The way to check the Ubuntu version can be vary depending on the desktop environment you use. But, there is a middle way that can be used on any desktop environment. Via terminal.

The command you are going to use is lsb_release.

The command of lsb_release was written by Chris Lawrence from Debian. This tool is used to get the LSB version details. LSB itself stands for Linux Standard Base. It is a joint project by a number of Linux distros under the organizational structure of the Linux Foundation to standardize the software system structure, including the filesystem hierarchy used in the Linux operating system. So, lsb_release is not exclusively available on Ubuntu. If you run the command of lsb_release with certain options, it can show different outputs on every distro.

This tool doesn’t require a root access to run. Anyone on your system can run it. To check the Ubuntu version, you can run lsb_release followed by the option of “r”.

lsb_release -r

To check the Ubuntu codename, you can run the command of lsb_release followed by option of “c”.

lsb_release -c

Or, if you want to check both the Ubuntu version as well as codename you can run the command of lsb_release followed by option of “a”.

lsb_release -a