I started a bit more systematic listing of what values you can expect using the various modules (feel free to edit and add your system): Linux (64bit) + WSL x86_64 aarch64

If you want to get raw OS name as supplied by OS itself then use sys.platform.

If you want to make OS-specific calls but via built-in Python modules posix or nt then use os.name.

If you want to check if OS is Windows or Linux or OSX then the most reliable way is platform.system().

Pro: Best portable way for Windows, OSX and Linux.Ĭon: Python folks must keep normalization heuristic up to date. How this works ( source): Internally it will eventually call internal OS APIs, get OS version-specific name like 'win32' or 'win16' or 'linux1' and then normalize to more generic names like 'Windows' or 'Linux' or 'Darwin' by applying several heuristics. 'Windows' # for Linux it prints 'Linux', Mac it prints `'Darwin'

How this works ( source): Internally it checks if python has OS-specific modules called posix or nt.Ĭon: no differentiation between Linux or OSX. 'nt' # for Linux and Mac it prints 'posix'

See here for various OS-specific values.Ĭon: OS version dependent, so best not to use directly. How this works ( source): Internally it calls OS APIs to get name of the OS as defined by OS.

'win32' # could be 'linux', 'linux2, 'darwin', 'freebsd8' etc There are 3 ways to get OS in Python, each with its own pro and cons: It returns Windows, Linux or Darwin (for OSX).

Users windows vs mac vs linux