Package Manager

A package manager is a tool that allows users to install, remove, upgrade, configure and manage software packages on an operating system. The package manager can be a graphical application like a software center or a command line tool like apt or pacman and dnf.

Quick Overview¶

Fedora¶

To search the repositories for a package type:

dnf search packagename

To install the package:

sudo dnf install packagename

To remove a package:

sudo dnf remove packagename

Other common DNF commands - autoremove - removes packages installed as dependencies that are no longer required by currently installed programs.

• check-update - checks for updates, but does not download or install the packages.

• downgrade - reverts to the previous version of a package.

• info - provides basic information about the package including name, version, release, and description.

• reinstall - reinstalls the currently installed package.

• upgrade - checks the repositories for newer packages and updates them.

• exclude - exclude a package from the transaction.

Ubuntu¶

To search the repositories for a package type:

apt search packagename

To install the package:

sudo apt install packagename

To remove a package:

sudo apt remove packagename
sudo apt purge packagename

Other common APT commands - autoremove - removes packages installed as dependencies that are no longer required by currently installed programs.

• downgrade - reverts to the previous version of a package.

• upgrade - checks the repositories for newer packages and updates them.

• show - Show information about the given package(s) including its dependencies, installation and download size, sources the package is available from, the description of the packages content and much more.

• update - used to download package information from all configured sources.

• full-upgrade - full-upgrade performs the function of upgrade but will remove currently installed packages if this is needed to upgrade the system as a whole.

For more visit Using apt Commands | itsfoss. Also read Difference Between apt and apt-get | itsfoss

Arch¶

To search the repositories for a package type:

pacman -Ss packagename

To install the package:

sudo pacman -S packagename

To remove a package:

sudo pacman -R packagename #removes single package leaving dependencies
sudo pacman -Rs packagename # removes packages and its dependencies

Removes orphan packages

pacman -Qdtq | pacman -Rs -

Upgrading packages

pacman -Syu

Other common pacman commands To search for already installed packages:

pacman -Qs string1

To view the dependency tree of a package:

pactree packagename