Ansible is a powerful and widely adopted automation tool for SysAdmins, Developers, Network Engineers and many other users. When writing Ansible playbooks you may want to execute different tasks, or have different goals, depending on the value of a fact (data about the remote system), a variable, or the result of a previous task.

One of the condition is execution of a task if the OS family or OS Distribution is matched. This is usually achieved by using ansible_facts[‘os_family’] & ansible_facts[‘distribution’] fact. Ansible facts are variables containing information about the remote systems to be managed. With facts, you can use the behavior or state of one system as configuration on other systems.

In this guide we share a list of OS Family and OS distributions and how Ansible will group then.

Common Ansible OS Family & Distribution Facts

1. RedHat OS Family

Below is a list of OS distributions that fit into RedHat OS Family:

• RedHat
• CentOS
• Fedora
• Scientific
• CloudLinux
• OracleLinux
• Amazon
• XenServer

Usage examples:

# OS Family
when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "RedHat" # CentOS 8, CentOS 7,Fedora 33, Amazon Linux 2, e.t.c

# Apply condition to a specific Distribution
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "CentOS" # CentOS 8,7,6
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Amazon" # Amazon Linux
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Fedora" # Fedora 33,32,31,..
when: (ansible_facts['distribution'] == "CentOS" and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] == "8") # CentOS 8 only

2. Debian OS Family

Distributions:

• Debian
• Ubuntu

Usage examples:

# Apply to either
when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Debian" # Debian 10,9,..,Ubuntu 20.04,18.04,e.t.c

# Specific distribution examples:
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Debian" # Debian 10,9,8,..
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Ubuntu" # Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04,..
when: (ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Debian" and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] == "10") # Only Debian 10
when: (ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Ubuntu" and ansible_facts['distribution_major_version'] == "20") # Only Ubuntu 20.04

3. Suse OS Family

• SUSE
• SLED – SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
• SLES – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Suse"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "SLES"

4. Gentoo OS Family

• Gentoo

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Gentoo"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Gentoo"

5. Archlinux OS Family

• Archlinux

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Archlinux"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Archlinux"

6. Mandrake OS Family

• Mandriva

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Mandrake"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Mandriva"

7. Solaris OS Family

• Solaris
• Nexenta
• OmniOS
• OpenIndiana
• SmartOS

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Solaris"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "OmniOS"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "SmartOS"

8. AIX

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "AIX"

9. Alpine OS Family

• Alpine Linux

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Alpine"
when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Alpine"

10. macOS – Darwin

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Darwin"

11. FreeBSD

• FreeBSD

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "FreeBSD"

12. HP-UX

• HP-UX

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "HP-UX"

13. Windows

when: ansible_facts['os_family'] == "Windows"

Extra Distribution examples

• VMware ESXi

when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "VMwareESX"

• OpenWrt

when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "OpenWrt"

• CoreOS

when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Coreos"

• ALT Linux

when: ansible_facts['distribution'] == "Altlinux"

More guides on Ansible:

• How To Manage Docker Containers With Ansible
• Introduction to Ansible Inventory Management
• Introduction To Ansible Automation on Linux