diff --git a/Doc/library/platform.rst b/Doc/library/platform.rst
--- a/Doc/library/platform.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/platform.rst
@@ -260,6 +260,11 @@ Unix Platforms
    parameters.  ``id`` is the item in parentheses after the version number.  It
    is usually the version codename.
 
+.. function:: linux_version()
+
+   Get the version of the Linux kernel as a tuple: (kernel version, major
+   version, minor revision). Return ``None`` if the system is not Linux.
+
 .. function:: libc_ver(executable=sys.executable, lib='', version='', chunksize=2048)
 
    Tries to determine the libc version against which the file executable (defaults
diff --git a/Lib/platform.py b/Lib/platform.py
--- a/Lib/platform.py
+++ b/Lib/platform.py
@@ -1492,6 +1492,15 @@ def platform(aliased=0, terse=0):
     _platform_cache[(aliased, terse)] = platform
     return platform
 
+def linux_version():
+    info = uname()
+    if info[0] != 'Linux':
+        return None
+    version = info[2]
+    # platform.release() is something like '2.6.33.7-desktop-2mnb'
+    version = version.split('-', 1)[0]
+    return tuple(int(item) for item in version.split('.'))
+
 ### Command line interface
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_platform.py b/Lib/test/test_platform.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_platform.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_platform.py
@@ -271,6 +271,15 @@ class PlatformTest(unittest.TestCase):
                 returncode = ret >> 8
             self.assertEqual(returncode, len(data))
 
+    def test_linux_version(self):
+        version = platform.linux_version()
+        if platform.system() == 'Linux':
+            self.assertEqual(len(version), 3)
+            for field in version:
+                self.assertEqual(type(field), int)
+        else:
+            self.assertIsNone(version)
+
 
 def test_main():
     support.run_unittest(