what is the difference between == operator and equals()? (with hashcode() ???)

Question

I was learning hashcode in more depth and figured that:

1. If you override equals(), you must override hashcode() too.

2. To find if

Answer 1

== is identity.

.equals() is equality.

.equals() defaults to just using == (just like hashCode() defaults to System.identityHashCode() but you can override them if there's a more meaningful way to check for equality. Typically this is a sort of "structural" equality. ie: are all of the pieces of this .equal() to all of the pieces of that?