Yum Extender – A Graphical Front-end Tool For YUM/DNF

Yum Extender, also known as yumex, is a graphical front-end for Yum/DNF package manager. It makes the process of installing, removing, upgrading and updating packages much easier with a simple, yet fully functional graphical user interface. Yumex is written using Python programming language. For those who don't like the command line way to manage packages, YUM Extender or yumex can be a good choice.

This brief tutorial describes how to install Yum Extender in Fedora 22 KDE desktop and it's basic usage.

Install Yum Extender

Yum Extender, or Yumex, is available in the Fedora default repositories.

So, to install it on Fedora 22 and newer versions, run the following command from Terminal:

$ sudo dnf install yumex-dnf

Type "Y" without quotes and hit ENTER.

The packages in the default repositories might be bit old. So, if you want to install the latest Yum Extended version, it is recommended to build and install manually by yourself.

To do so, run the following commands one by ones as root user:

# dnf install python3 python3-gobject python3-dnfdaemon

# git clone https://github.com/timlau/dnf-daemon.git

# cd dnf-daemon

# make test-inst

That's it. Yum Extender has been installed. Let us go ahead and see how to use it.

Usage

Yum Extender usage is very simple and straight forward. Open yumex-dnf from menu.

Here it is the default interface of yumex-dnf.

Yum Extender Default Interface

Yum Extender has a Menu bar on the top.

The Menu bar has the following five menu items.

From left to right:

1. The main menu (The down arrow),
2. Apply pending actions (The gear box),
3. Filter menu (The three parrallel lines),
4. Search option menu,
5. Search entry.

In the bottom, there are four items.

From top to bottom:

1. Package description,
2. Package update information,
3. Package filelist,
4. Package requirements.

To view the each menu items description, just hover the mouse pointer over the menu items.

As you see in the Yum Extender default interface, the packages are shown in red color. That means, thee packages shown in Red color are needs to be updated. If you a package is shown in Green, it is an installed package. Blue color indicates obsoleted packages and Black color indicates the available packages in the repositories.

Now, let us select and install all available updates. To select or deselect all packages, Click on the plus sign (+) in the header column.

Click "Apply pending changes" button in the top Menu bar.

Now, all packages will be updated to the latest available packages from the repositories.

To update or install a particular package, enter the package name in the search box on the top. Then, select the package listed in the search result to install it. For example, to install vsftpd, just enter the keyword "vsftpd" without quotes in the search box and hit enter.

Then, click "Apply pending changes" button on the Menu bar. The selected package will be installed along with all dependencies. You don't need to bother with command line options. Everything will be done via the Yum Extender graphical interface itself.

Also, you can select the repositories from the Main menu. To view the repositories, click on the Main menu icon and select Preferences option.

Then, select the Repositories button.

From here, you can select/deselect a repository.

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