DNF – Behind the scenes of Fedora's future package manager
Replacement Parts
DNF will soon replace Yum as Fedora's default package manager, but it still has some hurdles to overcome.
Package managers are such an integral part of a distribution that the idea of replacing one may seem surprising – or even a challenge to the distribution's identity. Yet that is what Ale¨ Kozumplík and the other contributors to DNF [1] are preparing to do. With version 0.4.11 just released, DNF is currently available in Fedora 20 and is tentatively scheduled to replace Fedora's package manager Yum [2] entirely by the end of 2014.
Kozumplík is a Red Hat employee working out of Prague. "I had my first serious open source inside exposure in 2009 when I started to work on Anaconda, the Fedora system installer," he says. "Anaconda interacts with Yum, of course, so I learned about the general issues with packaging then."
Gaining experience and wanting to work on something different, Kozumplík began exploring Fedora's packaging tools in late 2011. Today, DNF is developed full time by Kozumplík and Radek Holý, with contributions from Yum expert Zdenek Pavlas and university student Jan Silhan. Other contributors include Michael Schroeder on libsolv [3], TomᨠMlcoch on a C library for metadata synchronization and downloads, Richard Hughes on the PackageKit front end [4], and Jindrich Lu¸a on the library for handling high-level distribution metadata.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.