> Because that's exactly what lsb_release does as well.

You must know something about common lsb_release implementations that I
don't.  As far as I saw in the LSB documentation, it is required to
print out information in a certain format, but how it is implemented is
totally up to the distribution in question.

You give examples of SuSE and Fedora as not having /etc/lsb-release
files, and I'm sure you are right, but I happen to know that both of
them have compliant lsb_release executables (and that they have had for
many releases).  So, the patch that I've submitted will definitely work
correctly for those two distributions, although it will pay the price of
having to spawn a subprocess and then wait for the lsb_release
executable to do its work (however it does it).

However, presumably your SuSE- and Fedora- specific techniques will give
correct answers on those platforms faster than the generic lsb_release
would.