a "differences in distro" document?

[happybunny]

Does anyone know of or have a document or site on how to accomplish similar things between the distro's?

For instance:

To stop a service:

Redhat: # service "servicename" stop

Slackware: /etc/rc.d # "servicename" stop

Suse: YaST screen: click services stop

(not even sure thats correct but hopefully you get the point)

Location of key docs:

Redhat: /etc/syconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-xxx

Slack: /etc/xxx

etc, etc,etc...

NOTE: i don't really need help with the above examples, I'm just looking for a way to easily transition from one distro to the next.

[Ludootje]

Most distros just offer frontends to things, and it's the frontends which change. If you use "the real thing", there's not so much which changes. For example you example of services: those are only frontends. There are other, universal ways for those things. For example, you take the daemon's init script, and add "stop" as the parameter - that's the same in every distro. Or you just "killall" it. Depending on the service, it might have its own - again, universal, i.e. "distro-independent" - way to do it. Take, for example, Apache: you can use "apachectl" to command the daemon on every distro. I think the biggest difference you can encounter is when you switch from SysV-style init script to BSD-style init scripts (for example: Debian (SysV) vs. Slackware (BSD-style). But even here, for most people the difference isn't really big.
The only noticeable difference I can think of right now, is the directory structure (edit: which I now notice you referred to as well), but when all distros adhere to the LSB, I don't think this'll be a problem anymore (unless I completely misunderstand the purpose of the LSB, which is possible of course, as I admit I never really looked into it).

[happybunny]

that is great input...but it leads me to another question:

What distro is "the real thing" as you say?

I have found that all my Redhat knowledge is very unique and doesn't translate to any other distro very well.

So do you have advise on learning universal linux commands?

I have recently switched to slackware so I guess reading up on BSD style linux would be a good start.

[JohnT]

There's a good paper (http://www.mewburn.net/luke/talks/auug-2003/) by the author of NetBSD's rc.d system. It shows why the design choices were made and why he thinks it's better than the SYSV style startup scripts.

[Ludootje]

Originally posted by happybunny
What distro is "the real thing" as you say?
Sorry if I wasn't very clear... by "the real thing", I mean not use any of RedHat's (or whatever distro you want) graphical tools, but instead edit the configuration files directly, or use the CLI tools for which those frontends are built. For example, 'useradd' / 'adduser' are available on all distros, and they are the same everywhere. RH's tool to add users[1], however, is only available on RH.

I'm not saying graphical tools are bad, quite the contrary - I'm sure they can be very, very useful. It's just that, when you can manage your system by editing configuration files or using the GNU tools (which work on every distro), you don't need some kind of document which lists the changes.

[1] I'm only using this as an example - I've never used RH (and don't plan to), but I suppose they've got some graphical tool to add users.

[happybunny]

right....i got that exactly.

I am finding that all the conveniances of Redhats command line scripts (like service iptables stop and chkconfig) don't apply anywhere else.

I am looking for more universal ways to do things as to better underdstand and apply knowledge to any distro.

The link JohnT sent looks good...I am reading through it now.

I am also slowly attempting linuxfromscratch to hopefully get a deeper understanding of everything.

As a side note, the GUI tool to configure the network in RH forces the OS to start using a different set of config files from the CLI interface....very odd. So I am against GUI's in Redhat as well.

As far as "What distro is the real thing", if I were to learn slackware, would the knowledge I gain be more universally applicable than the knowledge of Redhat? Or is slackware also driven by "frontends" as you mention?

[Ludootje]

Again, no distro is "the real thing" - editing the configuration files by hand, and using the GNU tools to configure the system is "the real thing".

As for slackware, yes the knowledge you will gain from it will be much, much more universally applicable.
AFAIK, Slackware and Debian are the two distros from which you will learn the most when it comes down to administrating the box from the CLI.
Slackware, as I said before, does have another type of init system, which very few (if any) other GNU/Linux distros use.
But in general, what you learn from Slackware will help you a lot I think.
I'm not saying you can't learn from other distros like RH, Mdk or SuSE - if you simply ignore the tools so-called "newbie-friendly" distros provide, you can learn just as much from them. Slackware just "enforces" the use of the CLI more than those distros. Also, if you read helpfiles for those newbie-friendly distros, they will give explanations using their tools, while Slackware's helpfiles will most probably make (much?) more use of the GNU tools.

[bwkaz]

Not sure how this ended up in How I Did It, but off to Which Distro? we go... ;)

(And yeah, I know, this isn't really much of a Which Distro? question, but I think that forum is the best thing we have for it. :))