Command by command
| Windows | Linux | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
ipconfig | ip -brief addr show | Addresses per interface |
ipconfig /all | ip addr show | Full detail including MAC |
ipconfig /release | dhclient -r eth0 | Give up the DHCP lease |
ipconfig /renew | dhclient eth0 | Request a new lease |
ipconfig /flushdns | resolvectl flush-caches | Only if systemd-resolved is the resolver |
ipconfig /displaydns | resolvectl show-cache | systemd-resolved only, on recent systemd releases |
What the output looks like
$ ip -brief addr show
lo UNKNOWN 127.0.0.1/8
eth0 UP 192.168.1.42/24Why the two differ
Windows bundles addressing, DHCP client control and DNS cache management into one command because one service owns all three. Linux does not have that service. Addresses are kernel state managed through ip; DHCP is a userspace client such as dhclient or systemd-networkd; DNS caching may be handled by systemd-resolved, dnsmasq, nscd, or nothing at all. So there is no single equivalent, and which command you need depends on what your distribution actually runs.
The trap
ipconfig /flushdns has no universal counterpart. resolvectl flush-caches clears only systemd-resolved's cache: where systemd-resolved is not running the command fails, and where it runs but is not the resolver applications use (check /etc/resolv.conf) it succeeds while flushing a cache nothing reads. Many Linux systems have no DNS cache at all, in which case there is nothing to flush and a stale answer is coming from somewhere else — the application, the browser, or an upstream resolver.
Common questions
Is there an ipconfig package I can install?
No. The name does not exist on Linux in any standard package. If a tutorial tells you to run ipconfig on Linux it has confused the two operating systems — the closest historical equivalent was ifconfig, itself now superseded by ip addr.
How do I see my default gateway, the way ipconfig shows it?
ip route show default. Linux keeps the gateway in the routing table rather than as a property of the interface, which is why it does not appear in ip addr output.
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