> I have also been trying to write some scripts that work across multiple distro...

> I have also been trying to write some scripts that work across multiple distros. Detecting distros is wierd. "lsb-release" is not present in most distros. "/etc/issue.net" is present in some, but not on ArchLinux.

Try /etc/os-release first (http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.h...). It should be present in all modern distros (even if they don't use systemd).