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If I want to work between Ubuntu and Debian or switch to one or the other, would there be a good way to know what commands will work on both?

I have set up Debian with sudo (i.e. by not choosing a root password), and I want to do a basic server setup, install Postgresql etc, but I'm not sure how much of the things in the Ubuntu wiki (for example) will map over to Debian. I like the way the Ubuntu wiki is laid out, and it seems more thought-out than Debian's wiki. But the commands to set up Postgresql in Debian seem rather different.

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As I'm sure you know, Ubuntu is based upon Debian (Ubuntu releases are rebased against Debian testing periodically) and a there is a lot of similarity between the two. That said, they do differ in sometimes quite significant ways. For example, for many years Ubuntu used upstart as its default init system whereas Debian stuck to sysvinit (both use systemd as the default now though).

In general though, a lot of the Ubuntu wiki should still be applicable to Debian. If you are following setup instructions (and this applies to any cookbook or HOWTO you follow), you should validate them before you use them. There might be subtleties in commands between software releases, etc. and typing commands willy-nilly could leave you with a very broken system.

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  • Not sure what how I would validate instructions without actually making non-reversible changes but thanks for the advice.
    – warsong
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 20:14
  • The key thing is not to copy and paste long commands without checking to make sure that they seem sane.
    – mjturner
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 20:52
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The main differences in distros are package managers. Really beyond that distros will be mostly the same. Maybe some differences in file locations, but that is not common.

Ubuntu is Debian based. I personally can not think of a command that would be different between the two. But I'm sure there are some differences. As Terdon said, 99% of everything will work. This will even be true if you go for different bases like Red Hat. Arch throws a little bit of a loop, but even it isn't that different.

Tl;dr, The main differences are package managers. Everything should work fine.

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  • Thanks, that's what I was hoping to hear. I want to do minimal sysadmin stuff because as far as I'm concerned the OS should be able to do what I want with the smallest possible amount of effort and interference, the whole reason I picked Debian (and previously Ubuntu) was the idea of sane defaults.
    – warsong
    Commented Jul 27, 2015 at 20:17
  • If you like Debian and are trying for minimal then I suggest Crunchbang (#!) as your OS of choice. It is basically stripped down Debian. If you want to try a different distro I am particularly fond of Arch, and Archbang is a good alternative (much easier to install than Arch, but still need to know what you're doing). BTW, you should mark the question resolved and pick an answer if you've gotten the info you wanted.
    – MaybeALlama
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 7:11
  • Oh, and since you seem new to Linux, might I suggest linuxcommand.org it has a good explanation between the differences of distros, in general terms because it doesn't list and compare them.
    – MaybeALlama
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 7:14
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    Hah I probably shouldn't mention how long I've gotten away knowing the bare minimum, but thanks
    – warsong
    Commented Jul 30, 2015 at 7:26

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