Say what you will about Ubuntu, but its total footprint is rather minimal and yet manages to include most utilities needed to perform basic administrative tasks.

CentOS, on the other hand, requires the download of a 4GB image just to get bzip. The only reason I’m even using it is because it’s all we run in production at work and I need to get more familiar with it.

Install packages

Here’s a laundry list of things I’m finding I need to install on new images:

yum install bzip gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel screen

Network management

“ifconfig” is no more; use:

ip addr

Or, to see a brief summary of states:

nmcli d

Or, for TUI-based configuration, use:

nmtui

If multiple interfaces were configured, at least one of them will be disconnected at boot. Set “onboot=yes” for each “ifcfg-enp0sX” adapter in:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp0s8

Start ssh at boot

Enable port 22 or whatever in /etc/sshd/sshd_config.

systemctl enable sshd