Linux distro command and config reference: pick your distro, pick a topic, get the box
I bounce between distros all day. And I keep blanking on whether it’s service or systemctl on this particular box. So I built my own crib sheet for the commands and config files that drift from one distro to the next. Pick your distro, pick a topic (network, firewall, services, logs, packages, users, system, storage), and you get the one-liner, the files you’ll actually open, a walkthrough for the job you do most, plus the command to confirm it worked. And the gotcha that got me on day one. I wish someone had handed me that gotcha list years ago. There’s a compare mode too, for when you’re hauling a service across distros and want both columns right in front of you.
What the reference covers (and what it does not)
This is for the everyday stuff. The 90% of tasks where the syntax shifts between distros but the goal hasn’t moved an inch. Set a static IP. Open a port. Start a service on boot, install a package, hand someone sudo, read the journal for the last hour. For each distro-and-topic pair you get the one-liner, the config file that actually matters, a walkthrough for the most common job in that topic, a command to verify it stuck, and a note on the trap that catches people the first time they touch that distro.
What it won’t do is replace the real docs once you wander off the beaten path. It covers the standard case. Full stop. The second you’re into multi-homed routing or some gnarly storage layout or custom kernel params, go read your distro’s wiki. That’s still where you want to be. This is just here to spare you the five minutes of “hang on, is it ufw or firewalld on this one.” Five minutes sounds like nothing until you’ve burned it twenty times in one week.
Distros currently covered
Seven distros. Between them they cover most of the production Linux I run into in 2026.
- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS: what I spin up by default for a new server, and the cloud image every big provider shoves at you first.
- Debian 12 Bookworm: Ubuntu’s parent. Leaner, more cautious. I reach for it on bare metal.
- Fedora 40: the front edge of the RHEL world, on a six-month cycle. New stuff lands here before it lands anywhere else.
- Rocky Linux 9 / Alma 9 / RHEL 9: the enterprise RHEL trio. Same syntax across all three, no exceptions.
- Arch Linux: rolling release, bare defaults, and you pick every single piece yourself.
- openSUSE Leap 15.5: the SUSE side of the house. YaST and wicked and all that.
- Alpine Linux 3.19: musl, OpenRC and apk, the combo sitting under most of the container images you run.
NixOS, Gentoo, Slackware, Void, FreeBSD. None of those made the cut for v1, sorry. If yours is missing and you want it in, ping me on the contact page and tell me which topics you actually live in.
Topics covered
- Network: static IP, DNS resolver, hostname, bouncing an interface. Whether you’re driving netplan, ifupdown, NetworkManager or systemd-networkd just depends on which distro and version you landed on.
- Firewall: opening a port so it survives a reboot, and listing what’s actually live. Could be ufw, firewalld, nftables or iptables doing the work.
- Services: start, stop, restart, enable on boot, check status. It’s systemd nearly everywhere in 2026. Alpine’s the odd one out on OpenRC.
- Logs: the system journal, app logs, where the log files hide, filtering by service or by time.
- Packages: install, remove, search, update, upgrade, across apt, dnf, pacman, zypper and apk.
- Users: add someone, tweak an account, hand out sudo, reset a password, see who’s logged in.
- System: rename the host, fix the timezone, check the kernel and distro version, reboot, see how much memory’s free.
- Storage: mount a disk, make it stick through fstab, list block devices, check free space, reach for the filesystem-specific tools.
Side-by-side compare
Compare mode drops two distros side by side for the same topic. I lean on it hard when I’m moving a service across distros, or writing the difference into a runbook, or walking someone through a distro they’ve genuinely never touched before. Your last distro choice gets saved in localStorage. So you don’t have to re-pick it every single time you wander back.
Why we built this rather than another cheatsheet
Most cheatsheets are a wall of commands with zero context. They hand you the command and just stop. No file, no way to check it worked. Nothing about what’s going to bite you on day one either. That’s the whole reason the box is laid out the way it is. Every step in there earned its spot because one of us got caught by the gotcha at the bottom on first contact with that distro. And compare mode? That’s here because migrations are where all the friction piles up. The two-column view is the bit that saves real time, I think. Give a seasoned admin two columns side by side and they’re done reading in under a minute. The same comparison across two browser tabs used to cost me ten, and usually my train of thought.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Rocky 9, Alma 9 and RHEL 9 in one entry?
Because they’re binary-compatible rebuilds of the same upstream. They really are the same OS underneath. Across network, firewall, services, logs, packages, users, system and storage, every command and every file path lines up. Splitting them into three entries would just be the exact same data typed out three times. So I didn’t bother.
Why is Fedora 40 separate from Rocky 9 if both are in the RHEL family?
Fedora runs ahead. By the time you’re on Fedora 40 or 41, the defaults have drifted well past RHEL 9: newer dnf5, a newer kernel, newer systemd. The gaps are small, the kind you only notice once a command fails, so Fedora gets its own entry to catch them.
Can I bookmark a specific distro and topic?
Yep. The distro and topic ride along in the URL as hash params, so ?d=ubuntu24&t=firewall drops you straight onto the Ubuntu 24.04 firewall box. Bookmark that, and you land right back where you left off.
Does it work offline?
It does. Once the page has loaded, everything lives in your browser. No server round-trip to draw any box. Save the page to disk and it’ll run fine on an air-gapped server.
How is this different from running man?
man tells you what one command does. This tells you which command and config file you actually reach for to get the common job done, and how that shifts across distros. They pair up nicely. Start here, then jump to man when you need the exact flag.
Will you add more distros?
If people ask, sure. Send me the distro and the topic you live in via contact. Anything in active enterprise use skips the line.
