Netcat on Fedora is a different Netcat

[Phil Meyer]

Giuseppe Fuggiano wrote:
> Hi list.
>
> I recently installed Fedora and today I got a little time after work
> to configure it on my laptop.  The first thing I did was configure the
> network to access to the internet and to my LAN at home.  To test the
> connection I used netcat to listen to a dummy port, as I usually do.
> The thing I discovered is that nc on Fedora has a different manpage, a
> different binary and almost different syntax.
>
> Why?!
>
> On every other distribution nc is the same and has the same syntax.
> Why does Fedora used a different version, maybe patched or totally
> different application... with the same name?
>
> How can I be totally sure that netcat is the only command with a
> different syntax?  Should I learn other syntaxes for each command,
> again?  :O
>
> I'd like to have the original software in my Linux distribution, and
> as closed as possible to other distros (which probably use the
> original).
>
> Maybe this netcat is another version of the original, also shipped by
> its author which I've never seen before...
>
> Thanks for explanations.
>
>   

Welcome to current!  Or, more current. :)

There are a LOT of major changes from

nc-1.10 (RHE4)
to
nc-1.84 (F10)

I suspect you are experiencing only version differences.

The man pages from the two versions above are VERY different, although 
common options seem to be the same.

Good luck!