Managing Software In Linux

This article is about managing software in Linux.

This is my Networking book on Amazon, if you would take a look at it I would appreciate it.

Managing Software

Software is managed in Linux through its package management system. Each
distribution has a different system. They are each different in ways but
basically do the same things. Software is released in packages that your
package management system can work with. It can download, update, and other cool
things. 

Learning to use your package management system is a great advantage to the Linux
user. It allows you to do much more, if you want to, than using a graphical
counterpart. By the way, a package from one system will not be compatible with
another system. The Debian and Red Hat systems are the most popular but there
are many other good systems associated with their distributions.

Almost all of the software can be found on a distribution's website. They are
very clear about what they have and what they do not. These bits of software are
in the form of packages. These packages are compressed and can contain many
different programs. One or more people create these packages for you to download
and they maintain it also. 

Packages live in repositories. These repositories are holding bins for software.
They contain all the software for the distribution. Their dependencies are kept
in a similar manner. These shared resources are used by many programs and vital
to a distribution. Package management systems install these dependencies and
related packages any time you are trying to install a piece of software.

Now, in any particular distribution there can be multiple tools for installing
and updating software. I like using Fedora because it has a lot of nice features
and I like the software that comes with it. Fedora, for example, uses "rpm" for
installing package files and "dnf" for installing dependencies. The tools are
different for every distribution. 

dnf search terminal

This command will search repositories for packages related to the search term
"terminal". You can then install anything that looks appealing.

dnf search neovim

Again, this searches for anything related to the neovim editor. Use it this way
to see what is out there for tools that you like to use. I use the neovim editor
so am always looking for other cool things to try with it.

To install packages that you like, use the "install" option.

dnf install neovim

This installs neovim and any dependencies that it needs. 

If you already have a package file on your computer, you can just install it
directly. Use the "rpm" command for this.

rpm -i neovim.rpm

This will install your package assuming you had a package named "neovim" already
downloaded on your computer. 

You can uninstall packages just as easy.

dnf remove neovim

However, the most common task is to update our software. Do it like this:

dnf update -y

We can directly update package files.

rpm -u neovim.rpm

To see all the packages on a system:

rpm -qa

We might have packages on our computer that are not installed. We can see if a
particular package is installed by using:

rpm -q neovim.rpm

This command lets you know if a package named "neovim.rpm" is installed or not. 

You can see information on any particular package:

dnf info neovim

We can also see what package installed any particular file on your system:

rpm -qf neovim

You might have to supply paths to some of these commands. It will depend on
where you are in your own system and the distribution you are using. Just
something to keep in mind.