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Is there a way to discover if an installed OS is workstation or server? Is it just a matter of the packages that are installed or is there some difference that can be detected?

Sean Perdew
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  • Depends on how technical you want to be: is a server with desktop to you a workstation or a server? If the 1st: `/usr/bin/startx` is a command to start the GUI. If present on a system... workstation otherwise server. A couple releases ago the desktop and the server became technically the same system (due to convergence ;) ) – Rinzwind Aug 13 '14 at 14:58
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    dupe: http://askubuntu.com/questions/12562/how-to-check-if-ubuntu-desktop-or-server-is-installed http://askubuntu.com/questions/434121/how-to-know-if-the-os-is-desktop-or-server-version http://askubuntu.com/questions/31081/whats-the-difference-between-the-server-version-and-the-desktop-version – Rinzwind Aug 13 '14 at 15:00

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Just the set of packages installed. You can start off with an Ubuntu Server installation and install ubuntu-desktop package to get the desktop OS. There is no guarantee that the absence of a *-desktop package implies a server OS, or that the presence of X11 implies a desktop OS.

muru
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I did find some interesting files in /var/log/installer:

media-info says "Ubuntu-Server" for the server and just "Ubuntu" for desktop. syslog shows the same information for the "cdrom"

or from the terminal run:

cat /var/log/installer/media-info

or, if the file doesn't exist, try:

cat /var/log/installer/lsb-release

Both of these are helpful and I can use them in conjunction with hardware information.

karel
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Sean Perdew
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