What is the simplest way to differentiate between Windows versions?

How开发者_高级运维 do I know programmatically whether my OS is Longhorn server or Vista (client).

It seems the major version and minor version are same for both:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724833.aspx

So, is there any better alternative?

Doesn't that same page you link give you the answer?

Windows Server 2008  OSVERSIONINFOEX.wProductType != VER_NT_WORKSTATION
Windows Vista        OSVERSIONINFOEX.wProductType == VER_NT_WORKSTATION 

Just check the wProductType member against VER_NT_WORKSTATION

edit

Doesn't look like there's a way to get this without P/Invoke. System.Environment.OSVersion doesn't expose this level of detail, and though there is an internal static class Win32Native in the Microsoft.Win32 namespace in mscorlib, as far as I can tell from disassembly, there's nothing that uses, let alone exposes, wProductType.

I have found (but not tried) this page on pinvoke.net.

For Server,

OSVERSIONINFOEX.wProductType != VER_NT_WORKSTATION

For Workstation

OSVERSIONINFOEX.wProductType == VER_NT_WORKSTATION

You can use WMI to find out windows version and all sorts of other system info as well.

Here is how to get a version string:

var osDetails = new System.Management.ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem").Get().OfType<System.Management.ManagementObject>().First();
string version = osDetails.GetPropertyValue("Caption") as string;

this will return a string that reads something like: "Microsoft Windows XP Professional".

there are more properties there apart from Caption that can be used to retrieve version numbers, editions, architecture etc.:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394239(v=VS.85).aspx