cat /etc/issue

[Wakatakakage]

Special character sequences:

\n Insert the nodename of the machine, also known as the hostname.
\l Insert the name of the current tty line.

See Beyond Linux From Scratch: Customizing your Logon with /etc/issue

[Wakatakakage]

From man issue

/etc/issue is a text file which contains a message or system identification to be printed before the login prompt. It may contain various @char and \char sequences, if supported by the getty-type program employed on the system.

The command cat /etc/issue may provide some version information, but the main purpose of the /etc/issue file appears to be to provide a message which will be interpreted and printed by a getty-type program on the console.

To get version information, you may have more luck with something like uname --all or lsb_release --all. Their man pages describe other available options.

Also, note the important difference between \ and / when used in character sequences.

[smurphos]

From man issue

/etc/issue is a text file which contains a message or system identification to be printed before the login prompt. It may contain various @char and \char sequences, if supported by the getty-type program employed on the system.

Indeed - /etc/issue defines the text at the top of a TTY (e.g when you Ctrl-Alt-F1)

There are a number of files you can cat to get some version info - e.g

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cat /etc/os-release

or

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cat /etc/linuxmint/info

But best version info comes from inxi (as it includes pretty much everything of any importance)

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inxi -Sxxx