pmp-p:
> android and aosp, termux are also linux distributions without /etc/os-release

I replied ealier. It's fine that platform.freedesktop_os_release() (I prefer a name with two underscores :-)) raises an error on embedded Linux distributions. Usually, when you work on embedded devices, you fully control your toolkit and what is shipped on it.

For Android, there is already https://docs.python.org/dev/library/sys.html#sys.getandroidapilevel function.

Open question: is Android a Linux distribution? ;-)


> the only thing reliable there is probably sysconfig.get_config_vars('MULTIARCH') when properly used.

It looks unrelated. It doesn't provide the Linux distribution name or version.