Note: This post is approximately a 4 minute read. Perhaps longer for someone for whom English is not their native language.
Note: For most OM Lx Rock or OM Lx Rolling users this first post provides more than enough to do your package management and system upgrades from command line (Konsole or terminal).
Among the changes in OM Lx 4.0 is switching from urpmi/rpm5.org to dnf/rpm.org. For most of us users we don’t need to be concerned about the rpm part that is just different versions of rpm and maintained by different people, this will affect developers but users likely won’t notice anything different. The change from urpmi to dnf will be noticed by users as the commands will be different.
The not so secret about package management in Linux is the Package Management GUI’s can take longer to learn and get used to than the command line interface (cli). The simplest thing is to open Konsole and type:
$ dnf --help
and:
$ man dnf
The help menu takes about a minute to a minute and a half to read. The man page takes about 3-5 minutes. Both are meant to be available for users to refer to as they use their system and need to find quickly how to do something. There are also wiki pages and docs about dnf. Using the DNF software package manager. Fedora wiki page. DNF Command Reference. Most users don’t really need to read these maybe just scan while you are getting used to dnf and know the links are available when you need to look something up. Same applies to --help menu and man pages, just scan them and know they are there if you need them.
Some basics for using dnf in OpenMandriva Lx 4.0:
To install a package:
$ sudo dnf install packagename
To remove a package:
$ sudo dnf remove packagename
To search repositories for a package:
$ sudo dnf search packagename
Note: I find that ‘dnf search’ will work with partial names as well which should make it lots easier to find
stuff.
To cleanup any files and packages left in cache and to remove repository metadata:
$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all
this will force dnf to download fresh metadata next time dnf is run.
To update your Rock system from command line:
$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf upgrade
Rock systems will automatically get switched to new repositories when a new stable version of OM Lx is released. For this upgrade you need the distribution upgrade command dnf distro-sync. We will announce this in the Forum and include any special instructions users need for that particular distribution upgrade. The distribution upgrade command is:
$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf distro-sync
To upgrade your Rolling system use the distribution upgrade command:
$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf distro-sync
This is used in Rolling for technical reasons. At appropriate times OM developers copy Cooker repositories to Rolling repositories. So basically the same as when Rock repositories are changed form say OM Lx 4.1 to OM Lx 4.2. When this happens there are new distro-release packages which makes distro-sync necessary to pick up the new package list for that version. We will announce this in the Forum and include any special instructions users need for that particular distribution upgrade.
Some 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.
repolist - simply list enabled repositories.
Some dnf commands may be abbreviated:
dnf in=dnf install
dnf ri=dnf reinstall
dnf dg=dnf downgrade
dnf rm=dnf remove
dnf up=dnf upgrade
dnf dsync=dnf distro-sync
