Output JSON from Bash script

If you only need to output a small JSON, use printf:

printf '{"hostname":"%s","distro":"%s","uptime":"%s"}\n' "$hostname" "$distro" "$uptime"

Or if you need to produce a larger JSON, use a heredoc as explained by leandro-mora. If you use the here-doc solution, please be sure to upvote his answer:

cat <<EOF > /your/path/myjson.json
{"id" : "$my_id"}
EOF

---

Some of the more recent distros, have a file called: /etc/lsb-release or similar name (cat /etc/*release). Therefore, you could possibly do away with dependency your on Python:

distro=$(awk -F= 'END { print $2 }' /etc/lsb-release)

An aside, you should probably do away with using backticks. They're a bit old fashioned.

I find it much more easy to create the json using cat:

cat <<EOF > /your/path/myjson.json
{"id" : "$my_id"}
EOF