Dear Michael, et al,

/usr/bin/unattended-upgrade runs three lsb_release subprocesses to
determine distro info.

It would be better to use Python's platform.freedesktop_os_release()
instead for the following reasons:
  * Uses Python module instead of external command
  * Does not use the "global" statement
  * Implementation has 12 fewer lines
  * Faster

Untested patch below.

Thank you!
Daniel Lewart
Urbana, Illinois

diff -ru a/unattended-upgrade b/unattended-upgrade
--- a/unattended-upgrade	2025-08-27 05:10:50.000000000 -0500
+++ b/unattended-upgrade	2025-09-18 00:00:00.000000000 -0500
@@ -47,8 +47,9 @@
 import locale
 import logging
 import logging.handlers
-import re
 import os
+import platform
+import re
 import select
 import signal
 import socket
@@ -112,24 +113,11 @@
 USERS = "/usr/bin/users"


-# no py3 lsb_release in debian :/
-DISTRO_CODENAME = ""  # type: str
-DISTRO_DESC = ""  # type: str
-DISTRO_ID = ""  # type: str
-
-
-def init_distro_info():
-    global DISTRO_CODENAME, DISTRO_DESC, DISTRO_ID
-    DISTRO_CODENAME = subprocess.check_output(
-        ["lsb_release", "-c", "-s"], universal_newlines=True).strip()
-    DISTRO_DESC = subprocess.check_output(
-        ["lsb_release", "-d", "-s"], universal_newlines=True).strip()
-    DISTRO_ID = subprocess.check_output(
-        ["lsb_release", "-i", "-s"], universal_newlines=True).strip()
-
-
 # init global distro info
-init_distro_info()
+info = platform.freedesktop_os_release()
+DISTRO_CODENAME = info["VERSION_CODENAME"]    # type: str
+DISTRO_DESC     = info["PRETTY_NAME"]         # type: str
+DISTRO_ID       = str.capitalize(info["ID"])  # type: str


 # Number of days before release of devel where we enable unattended