How to check Ubuntu version on your Shell

Knowing your version of Ubuntu will help you better understand what packages or applications you should install.

Ubuntu releases updates every 6 months. The objective of these updates is to polish Ubuntu until the LTS version is released.

Every two years, Ubuntu releases the LTS version (long-term support) with at least 5 years of support. Currently, the latest stable version is 20.10, released in October of this year, but the latest LTS version is 20.04 released in April.

Check your Ubuntu Version using GUI

This first method is one of the easiest to carry out and we will do it from the Ubuntu graphical interface which is GNOME.

From the main menu click Settings, scroll all the way down and click About.

You can see some basic system information including a version of your operating system under the OS Name.

Check Ubuntu version from a terminal

Run the following command:

lsb_release -a

And you will get a screen output similar to this:

Congratulations! You've learned how to check Ubuntu version on any system in two different ways.