DNF and RPM

Fedora and RHEL-family systems' package stack - rpm installs individual .rpm packages, while DNF (the successor to YUM) handles dependency resolution and repositories on top.

Package Management Updated August 28, 2026

  • package-management
  • fedora
  • rhel

The same two-layer pattern as APT and dpkg: a low-level tool for individual package files, and a higher-level tool that manages repositories and dependencies.

rpm: the low-level tool

sudo rpm -i package.rpm       # install a local .rpm file
rpm -qa                        # list all installed packages
rpm -ql nginx                  # list every file nginx's package installed
rpm -qf /usr/sbin/nginx        # which package owns this file?

Like dpkg, rpm alone won't fetch missing dependencies from a repository - it'll just refuse to install if something required is missing.

DNF: the layer you actually use

DNF replaced YUM as the default package manager starting with Fedora 22, and is now standard across current Fedora, RHEL, CentOS Stream, and Rocky/ AlmaLinux. yum is still available as a compatibility alias on many RHEL-family systems, forwarding to DNF underneath - you'll see both names in documentation of varying age.

sudo dnf check-update          # see what's available without installing
sudo dnf upgrade               # upgrade all installed packages
sudo dnf install nginx         # install, resolving dependencies automatically
sudo dnf remove nginx          # remove a package
sudo dnf search "web server"   # search package names and descriptions
dnf info nginx                 # details about a specific package

Unlike apt, there's no separate "refresh the index" step required before install - DNF checks repository metadata staleness automatically and refreshes it as needed.

Repositories

/etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo

Each .repo file defines one repository: a name, base URL or mirror list, and GPG key for verifying package signatures. Adding a third-party repository (RPM Fusion is a common example on Fedora, for packages that can't ship in the main repos for licensing reasons) means adding a .repo file here.

DNF's history feature

A DNF-specific convenience worth knowing: every transaction is logged and individually reversible.

dnf history

ID     | Command line             | Date and time    | Action(s)
    12 | install nginx            | 2026-08-20 09:14  | Install
    11 | upgrade                  | 2026-08-15 06:00  | Upgrade

sudo dnf history undo 12   # revert transaction 12 specifically

This makes recovering from a bad upgrade or an accidental install considerably less manual than reconstructing what changed by hand.

Package groups

RPM-based distros also support installing curated bundles of packages by purpose:

dnf group list
sudo dnf group install "Development Tools"

"Development Tools" is the RHEL-family equivalent of Debian/Ubuntu's build-essential metapackage - see Building From Source for why you'd need it.

Version pinning

sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(versionlock)'
sudo dnf versionlock add nginx

Requires the versionlock plugin, not built in by default the way apt-mark hold is - install it once, then use it the same way you'd hold a package on Debian/Ubuntu.