Yes, if you're using Xubuntu or ANY flavor then looking in that part of /etc will always return ubuntu else grub decides it wants to play a game of Thermonuclear Warfare with your machine being the target as the Kubuntu developers learned. I would actually look at DNS resolver differences and systemd, of all things, which changed between 17.04 and 17.10. I'm on the Bionic Beaver and it seems we've got it worked out but some switches were flipped in systemd as of 17.10 that didn't go exactly as Poettering's crew indicated on the tin that they would.