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At least on one of the buildbots:
Re-running test 'test_ssl' in verbose mode
test_ssl: testing with 'OpenSSL 0.9.8o 01 Jun 2010' (0, 9, 8, 15, 15)
 under Linux ('debian', 'squeeze/sid', '')
at the bottom of http://www.python.org/dev/buildbot/builders/i386%20Ubuntu%203.x/builds/1788/steps/test/logs/stdio
Someone on IRC pointed out that on their machine, the system Python returned ('Ubuntu', '10.04', 'lucid').

I can confirm that I see the ('debian', 'squeeze/sid', '') on py3k and trunk but that the Python 2.6 under Ubuntu reports ('Ubuntu', '10.04', 'lucid').

I think the problem might be that linux_distribution() reads /etc/debian_version first. The contents of the relevant files in /etc look like:
$ cat /etc/debian_version 
squeeze/sid
$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS"

Patch attached to check /etc/lsb-release before checking other files. Taken from Ubuntu Python 2.6 copy of platform.py. Applies against trunk (r83728) with a small offset against py3k (r83728).

FWIW, the output is a bit different here before the patch:
$ ./python -c "import platform; print(platform.linux_distribution())"
('Mandriva Linux', '2010.1', 'Official')
and after the patch:
$ ./python -c "import platform; print(platform.linux_distribution())"
('MandrivaLinux', '2010.1', 'Henry_Farman')
but I would say it's because Mandriva has inconsistent contents in their respective /etc/mandriva_release and /etc/lsb-release files.
The patch itself is a bit imperfect and will need reworking (_u_distname, _u_version and _u_id should be initialized to '' rather than catching UnboundLocalError; remove ubuntu-specific comments).

I think the intended means of accessing this information is via the lsb_release command (http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_4.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/lsbrelease.html). That said, I don't know if the file format will change drastically unless someone re-implements lsb_release.

Please check issue1322 for past discussion on similar topic (usability of lsb_release in platform.py).

I think we'll start to use the lsb_release command if available and as suggested in issue1322.
Note that if you test the API, make sure that you use a Python build from sources available on python.org - the Debian and Ubuntu packagers tend to patch Python in their distributions (just like RedHat and others do) and we don't really want to hunt down bugs/problems that are not relevant to our code base.

IMO using lsb_release is not an option, because it can take some time to complete. So maybe it's better for the Ubuntu change to guard the check with the existance of /etc/debian_version.
Please could you attach a Mandriva lsb-release file?

> Please could you attach a Mandriva lsb-release file?
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
LSB_VERSION=lsb-4.0-amd64:lsb-4.0-noarch
DISTRIB_ID=MandrivaLinux
DISTRIB_RELEASE=2010.1
DISTRIB_CODENAME=Henry_Farman
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Mandriva Linux 2010.1"
$ cat /etc/mandriva-release 
Mandriva Linux release 2010.1 (Official) for x86_64

Debian and Ubuntu use this patch: http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/python3.2/3.2.3~rc1-1/platform-lsbrelease.diff 

http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.html
is the next step, with the advantage of the definition of the file format for /etc/os-release.

platform.linux_distribution is being deprecated in 3.5 and removed in 3.6 as stated in comment http://bugs.python.org/issue1322#msg207427 in issue #1322
I'm guessing this issue should be closed when that patch is merged in?

See issue1322