How to check Operating System type with Powershell

Question: I need to determine the Operating System type  of a Linux Server , before deciding a scripted reponse. Is there a quick test to determine if it’s Linux?

 Answer:The Test-Connection cmdlet sends Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets ("pings") to one or more remote computers and returns the echo response replies. You can use this cmdlet to determine whether a particular computer can be contacted across an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

  You can use the parameters of Test-Connection to specify both the sending and receiving computers, to run the command as a background job, to set a timeout and number of pings, and to configure the connection and authentication.

Unlike the traditional "ping" command, Test-Connection returns a Win32_PingStatus object that you can investigate in Windows PowerShell, but you can use the Quiet parameter to force it to return only a Boolean value.

$ServerName = "127.0.0.1"
$TimeToLive = Test-Connection $ServerName -Count 1 | select -exp ResponseTimeToLive 
Switch($TimeToLive)
{{$_ -le 64} {"Linux"; break}
 {$_ -le 128} {"Windows"; break}
 {$_ -le 255} {"UNIX"; break}
}

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If you want to access increased information such as :

name, dnshostname,operatingsystem,operatingsystemservicepack,ip4address,lastlogondate,logoncount

this one-liner  using the Powershell cmdlet get-adcomputer and Test-Connection will supply the information

get-adcomputer $ServerName -Property * | Select-Object name,
dnshostname,
operatingsystem,
operatingsystemservicepack,
ipv4address,
lastlogondate,
logoncount, 
@{label = "PingResults"; Expression = {Test-Connection $_.ipv4address}} |sort lastlogondate -Descending

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