diff --git a/Lib/platform.py b/Lib/platform.py
index ec5df85..030ef2a 100755
--- a/Lib/platform.py
+++ b/Lib/platform.py
@@ -129,6 +129,10 @@
         # Standard Unix uses /dev/null
         DEV_NULL = '/dev/null'
 
+# Directory to search for configuration information on Unix.
+# Constant used by test_platform to test linux_distribution().
+_UNIXCONFDIR = '/etc'
+
 ### Platform specific APIs
 
 _libc_search = re.compile(b'(__libc_init)'
@@ -315,7 +319,7 @@
 
     """
     try:
-        etc = os.listdir('/etc')
+        etc = os.listdir(_UNIXCONFDIR)
     except os.error:
         # Probably not a Unix system
         return distname,version,id
@@ -331,7 +335,8 @@
         return _dist_try_harder(distname,version,id)
 
     # Read the first line
-    with open('/etc/'+file, 'r') as f:
+    with open(os.path.join(_UNIXCONFDIR, file), 'r',
+              encoding='utf-8', errors='surrogateescape') as f:
         firstline = f.readline()
     _distname, _version, _id = _parse_release_file(firstline)
 
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_platform.py b/Lib/test/test_platform.py
index 0dcfe05..8a5408e 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_platform.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_platform.py
@@ -1,7 +1,10 @@
+from unittest import mock
+import contextlib
 import os
 import platform
 import subprocess
 import sys
+import tempfile
 import unittest
 import warnings
 
@@ -295,6 +298,19 @@
                     returncode = ret >> 8
                 self.assertEqual(returncode, len(data))
 
+    def test_linux_distribution_encoding(self):
+        # Issue #17429
+        with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tempdir:
+            filename = os.path.join(tempdir, 'fedora-release')
+            with open(filename, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+                f.write('Fedora release 19 (Schr\xf6dinger\u2019s Cat)\n')
+
+            with mock.patch('platform._UNIXCONFDIR', tempdir):
+                distname, version, distid = platform.linux_distribution()
+
+            self.assertEqual(distname, 'Fedora')
+            self.assertEqual(version, '19')
+            self.assertEqual(distid, 'Schr\xf6dinger\u2019s Cat')
 
 def test_main():
     support.run_unittest(