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?

Answer 1

Dang -- lbrandy beat me to the punch, but that doesn't mean I can't provide you with the system results for Vista!

>>> import os
>>> os.name
'nt'
>>> import platform
>>> platform.system()
'Windows'
>>> platform.release()
'Vista'

...and I can’t believe no one’s posted one for Windows 10 yet:

>>> import os
>>> os.name
'nt'
>>> import platform
>>> platform.system()
'Windows'
>>> platform.release()
'10'

Answer 2

Watch out if you're on Windows with Cygwin where os.name is posix.

>>> import os, platform
>>> print os.name
posix
>>> print platform.system()
CYGWIN_NT-6.3-WOW

Answer 3

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'

Answer 4

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'

Answer 5

>>> import os
>>> os.name
'posix'
>>> import platform
>>> platform.system()
'Linux'
>>> 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

Answer 6

try this:

import os

os.uname()

and you can make it :

info=os.uname()
info[0]
info[1]