cut or awk command to print first field of first row

Specify the Line Number using NR built-in variable.

awk 'NR==1{print $1}' /etc/*release

Specify NR if you want to capture output from selected rows:

awk 'NR==1{print $1}' /etc/*release

An alternative (ugly) way of achieving the same would be:

awk '{print $1; exit}'

An efficient way of getting the first string from a specific line, say line 42, in the output would be:

awk 'NR==42{print $1; exit}'

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