I’m trying to get a working desktop setup for work (workstation)
I missing some software and i just found out that fedora has a bit more software.
So i wonder if its possible to add a fedora repo to install some software…
I have tried google and that gives zero working results.
I have tried to create manually create URL’s from the fedora mirrors… but as things dont work the same in Rhel based as it does in Debian based… with the source.list… i have got stuck on ideas to try.
does any of you have the answer?
and sadly flatpack do not have that software… it doesn’t even have a file search engine that is able to search file content in text files
Time for bed… way to late (6:45am)
Good night folks
What I learnt in a few hour on RHEL that the default RHEL repos have only the very basic apps for enterprise. So it may have only Firefox browser and Libreoffice, but not Google Chrome browser and other office apps.
So thy have a Fedora repo (enterprise quality and stability) that has those extra apps. It is called EPEL. Please read Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) :: Fedora Docs
I might add this repo if I discovered an app is not in the default Rocky Linux repos and will give you feed back.
Maybe you need to update your system first then try agin to search for your app.
Please let me know how are things going. We are in the same boat.
I hope an expert give us feedback and comment on this post and tell us if we really need to add The Fedora EPEL repos.
Update:
I see a reply to @Marie was posted by @nazunalika while I was replying.
I still hope an expert tell us a bit more about the contents of the default Rocky Linux repos and if it is necessary to add EPEL)
EPEL is not required, but most users of any Enterprise Linux distribution (RHEL and derivatives) usually have it and recommend to use it. EPEL will generally have things that the base distribution doesn’t have that ultimately enhance different parts of the experience. There’s a long list of things that are there, so even I won’t be able to provide any kind of comprehensive list.
The answer will almost always be: It depends. It depends on what you plan on using your system(s) for and what packages are “mandatory” for you. For example, weechat is always in EPEL, and I use that on one of my systems.
The bulk of what you will see in the repositories can be determined by looking at the groups/environments.
% dnf group list
% dnf group info "name"
The environments will have groups within them and you can drill further down if you wish to. You can also do different kinds of dnf searches to see what’s there.
# Shows what's in baseos only
% dnf repo-pkgs baseos list
# Shows what's in epel only
% dnf repo-pkgs epel list
Packages can also be searched for at pkgs.org. See for example:
EPEL is specific to Enterprise Linux distributions. Using EPEL will always be safe as they do not replace packages and there is a huge amount of compatibility. The times that it isn’t is during new minor releases, but that is a brief period of time only.
In my many years using Enterprise Linux distributions (and now building and maintaining Rocky Linux), the compatibility issues have been extremely minor or unnoticeable.
EPEL will always be a safe and compatible repository to use on Rocky Linux and RHEL.
Common third party repositories will have their own testing of the packages they maintain and ship. The EPEL maintainers will typically do their own testing, for example.
We (this project) do not test anything in third party repositories ourselves in normal cases. With that said, a lot of the community repositories have been trusted for years because of the effort the maintainers of those repositories put into them. This is why we list them and mention them here and our wiki as much as we do.
They are not comparable. AUR is specifically for user produced content. If you want something like AUR, you can look at copr. Users can sign up at the Fedora Project and make their own COPR projects and build their own packages if they so choose. Users can also use said packages easily. I maintain my own for example. While my packages may be safe to use, there are plenty of others that are not safe to use. Do your homework, read the descriptions of the COPR repos, and so on. YMMV and as always, use at your own risk.
Third-party repositories like EPEL, RPMFusion, ELRepo have teams behind them and do not allow random users to just show up and build and release a package, so no they are not an “AUR” and are not in the same boat.
Thanks a lot @nazunalika
I see, as I used for example dnf search chromium to check if Chromium browser is there in the repos (the defaults that just came ith default installation) I found it there. So I can if I want install it from default repos.
I noticed as well as I said in my first post that it offered me to install inxi - which -if I properly remember- was not available when I tried RHEL in their default repos.
I will try learn more about Rocky default repos and their content.
Thank you very much.
I am impressed with Rocky and the forum here.
UPDATE:
I just did dnf repolist and I got:
[oldtux@localhost ~]$ dnf repolist
repo id repo name
appstream Rocky Linux 9 - AppStream
baseos Rocky Linux 9 - BaseOS
crb Rocky Linux 9 - CRB
epel Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 9 - x86_64
epel-cisco-openh264 Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 9 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64
extras Rocky Linux 9 - Extras
These were the defaults as I don’t remember I played with any repos or even tried adding any. I see EPEL is already there by default.
RHEL was already a very stripped variant of there upstream project (Fedora) but starting with EL8, and EL9 the package composition got more streamlined to the needs of RHEL customers and the target market. EL10 is even worse, the mentioned packages (libreoffice and firefox) are not included anymore. So, to summarize, as a container platform for application workloads based on OCI images, RHEL and all derivates are a good choice. For a workstation setup its the wrong choice. Even with the great work of all EPEL developers …
Maybe that’s why it survived only for 3 hours when I tried RHEL on my laptop last night.
I see Rock Linux is much more convenient for a home user who might need to install another browser, or whatever software. It wasn’t easy on RHEL, but was amazing on Rocky Linux. I repeat again when I tried the command inxi and it wasn’t installed, it was so smart ans so user friendly to ask me if I want to install it and I just answered “y” to get it installed! That’s so smart and so friendly.
The inxi is in EPEL. Did you have EPEL set up on RHEL?
[jlehtone@x ~]$ inxi
bash: inxi: command not found...
[jlehtone@x ~]$ sudo dnf config-manager --enable epel
[jlehtone@x ~]$ inxi
bash: inxi: command not found...
Install package 'inxi' to provide command 'inxi'? [N/y] n
Whose feature is this anyway? The bash clearly invokes package manager when command is not found. How? It seems unlikely that the feature is added by Rocky.
EPEL is not default in either, AFAIK. On Rocky you did dnf install epel-release
No idea whether RHEL offers such convenience package to define the EPEL repo.
I double checked the commands I did on Bash. I never did that command. It seems EPEL was there by default. I only did sudo dnf update and sudo dnf upgrade and a few others commands to uninstall some stuff I don’t need like games and clean after uninstall.
[oldtux@localhost ~]$ dnf history list epel-release
ID | Command line | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | | 2024-05-07 00:15 | Install | 1794 EE
[oldtux@localhost ~]$
I don;t understand this date as I just installed Rocky last night only!
AFAIK I didn’t do it myself.
Briefly, I think there is here a misconception. RHEL (RedHat) and RL (Rocky) are the “same” equal OS. So, both provide the same experience if prepared equally.
If you used one of the desktop ISO installations, like for example KDE (I see you have other posts about having Rocky with KDE desktop), then EPEL would have been enabled in that ISO to allow you to install/use KDE. Since KDE exists in EPEL. Which will explain why it was enabled, and why the date shows being enabled in May.
