How to check if OS is Vista in Python?

Question

How, in the simplest possible way, distinguish between Windows XP and Windows Vista, using Python and pywin32 or wxPython?

Essentially, I need a function that called will return True iff current OS is Vista:

>>> isWindowsVista()
True

Answer 1

The simplest solution I found is this one:

import sys

def isWindowsVista():
    '''Return True iff current OS is Windows Vista.'''
    if sys.platform != "win32":
        return False
    import win32api
    VER_NT_WORKSTATION = 1
    version = win32api.GetVersionEx(1)
    if not version or len(version) < 9:
        return False
    return ((version[0] == 6) and (version[8] == VER_NT_WORKSTATION))

Answer 2

The solution used in Twisted, which doesn't need pywin32:

def isVista():
    if getattr(sys, "getwindowsversion", None) is not None:
        return sys.getwindowsversion()[0] == 6
    else:
        return False

Note that it will also match Windows Server 2008.

Answer 3

Python has the lovely 'platform' module to help you out.

>>> import platform
>>> platform.win32_ver()
('XP', '5.1.2600', 'SP2', 'Multiprocessor Free')
>>> platform.system()
'Windows'
>>> platform.version()
'5.1.2600'
>>> platform.release()
'XP'