I’ve used the STSADM commands within SharePoint for many, many years, and with a lot more SharePoint 2010 activity, I’m deliberately forcing myself to use the PowerShell alternative.

The “deploy” and “activate” feature commands are probably the MOST used (for me, at least) – so the equivalent commands are these ones ;

(1) Add Solution

STSADM :

• stsadm –o addsolution –filename “D:DeployMySharePointSolution.wsp“

PowerShell :

• Add-SPSolution “D:DeployMySharePointSolution.wsp“

(2) Deploy Solution

STSADM :

• stsadm –o deploysolution –name MySharePointSolution.wsp –url http://myspwebappp –allowgacdeployment –immediate

PowerShell :

• Install-SPSolution –Identity MySharePointSolution.wsp –WebApplication http://myspwebapp –GACDeployment

(3) Activate Feature

STSADM :

• stsadm –o activatefeature –name MyFeatureName –url http://myspwebapp

PowerShell :

• Enable-SPFeature –Identity MyFeatureNameOrGuid –url http://myspwebapp

Check out this link from Patrick Boom – he also covers Retract, Delete and Deactivate.