useradd and groupadd are the posix or SUS-standardized tools to create users and groups. You can expect them to work (almost) identically on all Linux distributions as well as on HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, ... adduser and groupadd are distribution specific wrappers which make it simpler to create users which conform to some (distribution-specific or local) policy. The options vary wildly between different distributions and other UNIXes may not have these commands at all. > So can I replace in the above mentioned commands groupadd and useradd
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2004/09/msg00215.html