It is easy to apply your existing knowledge of Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora to Ubuntu. The key differences between them are covered in this article.

Administrative Tasks

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora by default, each administrative user needs to know the root password, in addition to their own password.

In Ubuntu, each user only has one password. Users in the admin group can run command line and graphical applications with elevated privileges. Graphical admin tools prompt for this password when run, and command line tools can be run with root-privileges using sudo.

Package Management

Ubuntu has more packages available than Fedora, so you'll have a better chance of finding what you want in the repositories. As with Fedora, graphical applications will put a link into the Applications menu.

The Synaptic package Manager is an excellent tool for finding, fetching and installing packages. Press System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager to start Synaptic.

Ubuntu uses apt-get instead of yum, up2date and so on to find, download, and install packages and their dependencies.

Note that, unlike yum, apt-get is only for packages available in repositories - it cannot handle packages you have already downloaded. The dpkg command is used instead.

Table of Equivalent Commands

Below is a table of equivalent commands for package management on both Ubuntu/Debian and Red Hat/Fedora systems.

Task Red Hat/Fedora Ubuntu Adding, Removing and Upgrading Packages Refresh list of available packages Yum refreshes each time it's used apt-get update Install a package from a repository yum install package_name apt-get install package_name Install a package file yum install package.rpm

rpm -i package.rpm dpkg --install package.deb Remove a package rpm -e package_name apt-get remove package_name Remove a package with configuration files yum remove package_name apt-get purge package_name Check for package upgrades yum check-update apt-get -s upgrade

apt-get -s dist-upgrade Upgrade packages yum update

rpm -Uvh [args] apt-get upgrade Upgrade the entire system yum upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade Package Information Get information about an available package yum search package_name apt-cache search package_name Show available packages yum list available apt-cache dumpavail List all installed packages yum list installed

rpm -qa dpkg --list Get information about a package yum info package_name apt-cache show package_name Get information about an installed package rpm -qi package_name dpkg --status package_name List files in an installed package rpm -ql package_name dpkg --listfiles package_name List documentation files in an installed package rpm -qd package_name - List configuration files in an installed package rpm -qc package_name dpkg-query --show -f '${Conffiles}

' package_name Show the packages a given package depends on rpm -qR package_name apt-cache depends Show other packages that depend on a

given package (reverse dependency) rpm -q --whatrequires [args] apt-cache rdepends Package File Information Get information about a package file rpm -qpi package.rpm dpkg --info package.deb List files in a package file rpm -qpl package.rpm dpkg --contents package.deb List documentation files in a package file rpm -qpd package.rpm - List configuration files in a package file rpm -qpc package.rpm - Extract files in a package rpm2cpio package.rpm | cpio -vid dpkg-deb --extract package.deb dir-to-extract-to Find package that installed a file rpm -qf filename dpkg --search filename Find package that provides a particular file yum provides filename apt-file search filename Misc. Packaging System Tools Show stats about the package cache - apt-cache stats Verify all installed packages rpm -Va debsums Remove packages from the local cache directory yum clean packages apt-get clean Remove only obsolete packages from the local cache directory - apt-get autoclean Remove header files from the local cache directory

(forcing a new download of same on next use) yum clean headers apt-file purge General Packaging System Information Package file extension *.rpm *.deb Repository location configuration /etc/yum.conf /etc/apt/sources.list

Some of the information in this table was derived (with permission) from APT and RPM Packager Lookup Tables.

More technical information about Debian-style packaging can be found in Basics of the Debian package management system and the Debian New Maintainers' Guide.

Services

Services on Ubuntu are managed in a broadly similar way to those on Red Hat.

Services can be configured by clicking System -> Administration -> Services. A tool called Boot-Up Manager is also available.

Below is a table of example commands for managing services. The apache/httpd service is used as an example.

Task Red Hat / Fedora Ubuntu Ubuntu

(with sysv-rc-conf or sysvconfig) Starting/stopping services immediately service httpd start invoke-rc.d apache start service apache start Enabling a service at boot chkconfig httpd on update-rc.d apache defaults sysv-rc-conf apache on Disabling a service at boot chkconfig httpd off update-rc.d apache purge sysv-rc-conf apache off

Note: Whereas Red Hat and Fedora servers boot into runlevel 3 by default, Ubuntu servers default to runlevel 2.

Note: The service and invoke-rc.d commands call init scripts to do the actual work. You can also start and stop services by doing e.g. /etc/init.d/apache start on Ubuntu, or /etc/init.d/httpd start on Red Hat/Fedora.

Network

Fedora/RHEL have system-config-network, ubuntu pre 10.04 had gnome-nettool to edit static ip address, since 10.04 nm-connection-editor is the best choice. For Ubuntu 10.04 Studio there is only manual editing of files since NetworkMontor is not included

* ubuntu networking for basic and advanced users