how to tell the version of Redhat Linux installed on a machine from a command line

From Wijaya's Blog

Here is a sample:

$ uname -a
Linux myserver.mydomain.com 2.4.21-32.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Apr 15 21:17:59 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

It return the server kernel's version: 2.4.21-32.ELsmp, but not something my mother could understand.
To get a layman term, we can query file /etc/redhat-release instead.

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon Update 5)

POSTED BY WIJAYA KUSUMO AT 2/06/2006 11:43:00 AM