How To Install Packages From A Specific Repository In Linux

This brief tutorial explains how to install packages from a specific repository from command line in Unix-like operating systems. This can be useful when a certain package is not available from the official repositories or you just wanted to install the most recent version of a package from a specific third-party repository. It is not that difficult. Read on.

Install Packages From A Specific Repository In Linux

On YUM-based systems:

In RHEL, CentOS and other YUM-based systems, you can install packages from a specific repository, for example EPEL, as shown below.

$ sudo yum --enablerepo=epel install nagios

The above command will enable the EPEL repository and install nagios package.

If you don't know the repository name or its ID, refer the following link.

• How To Find The List Of Installed Repositories From Commandline In Linux

On APT-based systems:

In Debian, Ubuntu and other APT-based systems, we use -t flag with apt-get package manager to install a package from a specific repository i.e specific release.

The following command installs the lxd package from xenial-backports repository.

$ sudo apt-get -t xenial-backports install lxd

Please note that lxd package is available in the official repositories. However, I have installed it from the xenial-backports repository for the demonstration purpose.

Recommended Read:

• How To List Installed Packages From A Certain Repository In Linux

On SUSE/openSUSE systems:

In SUSE and openSUSE, we can install a package from specific repository by mentioning the repository name, alias with zypper package manager.

The following command will install Firefox web browser from Mozilla repository.

$ sudo zypper install mozilla:MozillaFirefox

Here, mozilla is the alias of the repository from which to install the package Firefox.

Please note that even though the packages are installed from a specific repository, the dependencies of the said packages might be retrieved from other repositories too. So, don't disable other repositories and try to install a package from a specific repository. You can't install all packages from only one repository.