apt-get not found on my VPS?

Today, I bought a Ubuntu 12.04 VPS from http://www.frontrangehosting.com, but when I access it via SSH, I can’t use apt-get.

[[email protected] /]# apt-get install python-software-properties
-bash: apt-get: command not found

edit: For some reason, it can’t find lsb-release

[[email protected] /]# cat /etc/lsb-release
cat: /etc/lsb-release: No such file or directory

My answer:

From your shell prompt, it appears you have CentOS or some other Red Hat-derived distribution rather than the Ubuntu you were expecting.

You can confirm this by running:

cat /etc/*-release

and inspecting the output.