Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions. Checking the version is important to get started with the operating system. The Debian operating system is used to run VPS and dedicated servers. Debian OS are distinguished by their performance and availability. Debian is free to use, which is an advantage of this OS compared to Windows OS. If you want to know more about the difference between Linux and Windows OS, you can find out in our article here. Debian OS is also an open source operating system that allows you to support programs and applications based on Perl, PHP, and MySQL. In this article we will look at how to check the Debian version via the command line using the four most popular methods.

The easiest way to check the version on your Debian VPS server is to look at the contents of the /etc/issue file with the cat command

However, this file contains only information about the version of the distribution, in order to check the version and release number of Debian, you need to use another command:

Starting with version 8, it became possible to use the hostnamectl command, which will display even more information about the installed system:

In addition, you can install the lsb-release utility, which is not available by default, and use it to find out the version of the operating system. You can use this command to check any version on your Debian server. To install, just use the command apt-get install lsb-release, and then run this command:

Please note that using /etc/os-release file is possible if your server is running Debian 9 or later:

In this article, we have shown the four most popular ways to check the Debian version using simple commands that even a novice user can use. Thanks to the fact that you know how to find the Debian version, you can now install additional packages compatible with your current Debian version.