dnf: The Fedora and Red Hat Package Manager

dnf (“Dandified YUM”) is the package manager on Fedora and the entire Red Hat family — RHEL, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, CentOS Stream. It replaced the older yum command, but on RHEL 8/9 the old name still works as an alias.

Daily commands

# Update package metadata + upgrade everything
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh -y

# Just refresh metadata (rarely needed; dnf does this automatically)
sudo dnf check-update

# Install
sudo dnf install nginx

# Install multiple
sudo dnf install nginx git tmux htop

# Install without prompts
sudo dnf install -y nginx

# Remove
sudo dnf remove nginx

# Remove orphaned dependencies
sudo dnf autoremove

Search and inspect

dnf search nginx                       # search names + summaries
dnf info nginx                          # detailed info about a package
dnf list installed                      # all installed
dnf list available                      # what's installable
dnf list --upgrades                     # what would be upgraded
rpm -qa | grep nginx                    # also list installed
rpm -ql nginx                            # what files does it install?
rpm -qf /usr/sbin/nginx                  # which package owns this file?

Group install

dnf groups are bundles of related packages — easier than installing 30 individually.

dnf group list                          # list available groups
sudo dnf group install "Development Tools"
sudo dnf group install "Container Management"
sudo dnf group remove  "Office Suite"

Repositories

dnf repolist                            # enabled repos
dnf repolist --all                       # all repos including disabled
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo URL
sudo dnf config-manager --enable repo-name
sudo dnf config-manager --disable repo-name

Add RPM Fusion (codecs and proprietary stuff on Fedora)

sudo dnf install 
  https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm 
  https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Add EPEL (extra packages on RHEL/Rocky/Alma)

sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

Transaction history (dnf’s killer feature)

Every install/remove is a transaction you can roll back:

dnf history                          # list past transactions
dnf history info 42                  # what was in transaction 42
sudo dnf history undo 42             # undo a transaction
sudo dnf history rollback 30         # roll back to transaction 30

This saves you when an upgrade breaks something.

Modules (Application Streams on RHEL)

RHEL 8+ ships multiple versions of language runtimes via “modules”:

dnf module list                      # all available modules
dnf module list nodejs               # versions of nodejs
sudo dnf module enable nodejs:18
sudo dnf module install nodejs

Cleanup

sudo dnf autoremove                  # remove orphan deps
sudo dnf clean all                   # clear all caches

The yum compatibility

On RHEL/CentOS/Rocky, you can type yum instead of dnf — it’s a symlink. Same commands work. New scripts should use dnf.

Useful one-liners

# What's about to update? See changelog before applying
dnf updateinfo info security

# Install a package only if it's not installed
sudo dnf install --skip-broken --best nginx

# Find what package provides a missing command
dnf provides */make
sudo dnf install make

# Show package dependencies
dnf repoquery --requires nginx
dnf repoquery --whatrequires nginx       # what depends on nginx

Common mistakes

• Forgetting --refresh on dnf upgrade in cron jobs — metadata can be stale.
• Mixing EPEL and RPM Fusion priorities incorrectly.
• Using rpm -i directly to install — bypasses dependency resolution. Use dnf install /path/to/file.rpm instead.

What to learn next

If your other machines run Arch, the pacman guide is next. Otherwise, head to the networking section.