The purpose of the uname command is to print information about the machine and operating system it is run on. There are several options that can be used. You could get any one some or all of the following information: Kernel name node name Kernel release Kernel version Machine Processor Hardware Platform Operating system While all your suggestions are valid, the "cat /etc/lilo.conf" or "cat /boot/grub/grub.conf" would require root privileges. The "ls /boot/vmlinuz*" command would give me not only which versions exist on the system but also the soft link to the default kernel, which should then change the command to either "ls -l /boot/vmlinuz*" or "ll /boot/vmlinuz*" Thus the simplest command is "uname -a" which allows any user to see what the current running kernel is....
