What do you mean by "that"? Python never had any code to parse and handle freekdesktop.org's os-release file. Are you referring to linux_distribution() function? Petr removed platform.linux_distribution() in bpo-28167 because the function was problematic on so many levels and relied on ill defined behavior.

The os-release file has been a well-defined standard for over 8 years. These days it's available in the base image of all major Linux distributions and countless other distributions. os-release became *the* standard to identify the version and vendor of a Linux distribution. In my opinion that's reason enough to include the feature.