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diff --git a/Doc/library/sys.rst b/Doc/library/sys.rst
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@@ -726,6 +726,12 @@ always available.
For Unix systems, this is the lowercased OS name as returned by ``uname -s``
with the first part of the version as returned by ``uname -r`` appended,
e.g. ``'sunos5'`` or ``'linux2'``, *at the time when Python was built*.
+ Unless you want to test for a specific system version, it is therefore
+ recommended to use the following idiom::
+
+ if sys.platform.startswith('linux'):
+ # Linux-specific code here...
+
For other systems, the values are:
================ ===========================
@@ -740,6 +746,12 @@ always available.
AtheOS ``'atheos'``
================ ===========================
+ .. seealso::
+ :attr:`os.name` has a coarser granularity. :func:`os.uname` gives
+ system-dependent version information.
+
+ The :mod:`platform` module provides detailed checks for the
+ system's identity.
.. data:: prefix