TIP_Converting_from_or_to_Fedora_Core

Introduction

This page is intended to show people coming from or going to Fedora Core how some things compare in the 2 distros. It's a pragmatic comparison and doesn't judge which one is better.

This is not finished... by any means.

Package Managment

Fedora primarly uses Yum for its package managment, a binary package manager, while Gentoo uses Portage, a source based package manager. They are both written in Python. This is a short list of similar processes that the two managers can perform.

Updating the package database

This command only checks to see if new packages are avaiable, and will not install anything onto your computer. Yum actually updates its list of packages at every run, unless you use the -C option to use the cached list.

Fedora

 yum check-update

Gentoo

 emerge --sync
 OR
 emerge-webrsync (If rsync does not work)

Update All Packages on your system

This command will actually install all of the updates on your system. The default behavior in yum is to ask before actually installing the updated packages; this behavior is replicated in emerge through the use of the --ask (-a) flag.

Fedora

 yum update

Gentoo

 emerge -aDv world

Installing a specific package

This will install only specific packages. You can install more than one if desired.

Fedora

 yum -y install app1 app2

or

 yum install app1 app2

Gentoo

 emerge app1 app2

or

 emerge -a app1 app2

Reinstalling a single package

Following the same pattern as above, more than one can be done at a time if desired.

Fedora

 yum update app1

Gentoo

 emerge --oneshot app1

Searching for packages in the database

Fedora

 yum search app1

Gentoo

 emerge --searchdesc app1

Note: On Gentoo, it's actually much better to install and use either the esearch package or the eix package to do a search. This is because they cache the searches, and are much faster than using emerge --search. You use them like so:

eix searchword

or

esearch searchword

Removing a package

Fedora

 yum remove app1

Gentoo

 emerge --unmerge app1

Services

To stop/start/whatever a service, you need to call the /etc/init.d script directly. There is no "service" command.

To enable/disable service on boot:

Fedora

 chkconfig <service> on
 chkconfig <service> off

 to specify runlevel:
 chkconfig --levels 235 <service> on

Gentoo

 rc-update add <service> <runlevel>
 rc-update del <service> <runlevel>

 i.e.: rc-update add apache2 default
       rc-update del alsasound boot