How to identify version of Redhat Enterprise Linux? Root & No root – Explained

This post is about identifying to know which version of RedHat Enterprise Linux commonly known as RHEL in the system administration and linux work.

Here is the root guide:

If you have root on a shell just run

cat /etc/redhat-release

That will show you definitively what version you have.

Here is the non root version:

That looks like a classic GNOME desktop. It’s still available in current versions of RHEL.
If you look at the screenshot for Classic GNOME you will see the same downward arrows next to the menus, which aren’t present in other versions of the RedHat desktop.

So, my guess is that this is either a customized GNOME desktop with a RedHat theme, or Classic GNOME running on RHEL 7 or 8. It could be older than that, as GNOME themes are easily changed.

If it wasn’t just a picture you could easily check the contents of /etc/*release or run “lsb_release -a”, which are the standard ways to identify an OS which complies with the Linux Standards Base. Sadly, you can’t do that with a screenshot.