Required by the LSB.
Get distro maintainer, name, version and version codename:
lsb_release -a
Sample output:
LSB Version: core-2.0-amd64:core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-amd64:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-amd64:core-3.1-noarch:core-3.2-amd64:core-3.2-noarch:core-4.0-amd64:core-4.0-noarch:core-4.1-amd64:core-4.1-noarch:security-4.0-amd64:security-4.0-noarch:security-4.1-amd64:security-4.1-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
TODO understand LSB Version.
Extract id programmatically to autodetect distro:
distro_id="$(lsb_release -i | sed -r 's/.*:\t(.*)/\1/')"
distro_version="$(lsb_release -r | sed -r 's/.*:\t(.*)/\1/')"