5 Ways To Figure Out Ubuntu Version
Like they say, there are many ways to skin a cat. In Ubuntu, there are at least five ways to figure out what version you are running on your system. From the Gnome Menu, you can navigate to System>About Ubuntu. This is by far the easiest. There are alternative ways of course. From the Terminal, you can type one of the following:
$ uname -a
$ lsb_release -a
$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
$ cat /etc/issue
If you know of other ways, please leave a comment.

Here’s a good little package..
http://programs.rcrnet.net/#version
wget http://programs.rcrnet.net/version/version-0.1-all.deb
dpkg -i version-0.1-all.deb
After all these years, linux still lacks a “version” command.
This command makes it simple.
To find your ubuntu version:
version “distro”
Example:
version ubuntu
version debian
To find a package version:
version “packagename”
Example:
version postfix
To find kernel version and if you are running 32 or 64 bit
version kernel
Rodney. Thanks for your input. A simple “version” command like this one is what Linux needs.