Pirut and yum-updatesd - software management

This blog entry covers how to managed currently installed or missing packages from Fedora using Gnome.

The closest term most people calls this is the Add/Remove software of Fedora Linux.

Pirut (pronounced "pirate") provides a set of graphical tools for managing Fedora Linux softwares.

Pirut tool makes use of GUI presenting packages to be added, removed, and updated to your current Fedora box. Pirut is actually the graphical front end for yum that does this add, remove and update software packages. Pirut also comes with Search, View, and Install menu facility that helps a lot on searching particular 'unknown' package.


INSTALLATION:
================

Installation is very simple. As root, issue this command

# yum -y install pirut


LAUCH:

Ctrl+F2, pirut



I would also recommend for most Fedora desktops that want to stay up-to-date , to install an update notification utility.


Yum-UpdatesD
============

yum-updatesd provides notification of updates which are available to be applied to your system. This notification can be done either via syslog, email or over dbus.


INSTALLATION:
=============

Use the champ, yum as follows

# yum -y install yum-updatesd


LAUNCH
=======

# service yum-updatesd start
# service yum-updatesd status

If you wish to make this permanent, you can modify your startup program like so

# chkconfig --levels 5 updatesd on

When yum-updatesd detected from yum repos that your box needs immediate updates, you will be notified about this by a popup message box. Cool.

Automatically, upon bootup, yum-updatesd checks for immediate updates that needs to be automatically downloaded and installed into your Fedora box. This is quite recommended on Fedora box that has fast web connections.

However, if you have a slow dialup connection, doing the update via yum CLI on a important-package at a time on daily basis would be fine but tedious.

See screenshot in action




That's is all.