Installation guide

Chapter 26.
Gnome-RPM
If you do not want to use the command-line version of RPM, you can use Gnome-RPM, a
graphical interface for Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). To learn more about RPM tech-
nology, turn to Chapter 25.
Gnome-RPM (which is also referred to as gnorpm) allows users to easily work with RPM
technology and features a friendly interface. It is "GNOME-compliant," meaning that it
seamlessly integrates into GNOME, a graphical X Window System desktop environment
provided with Red Hat Linux.
Using Gnome-RPM, you can easily accomplish the following tasks:
• Install RPM packages
• Uninstall RPM packages
• Upgrade RPM packages
• Find new RPM packages
• Query RPM packages
• Verify RPM packages
The Gnome-RPM interface provides a menu, a toolbar, a tree, and a window which displays
currently installed packages.
To perform a Gnome-RPM task, you usually find and select packages, then choose the type
of operation to perform using either a button on the toolbar, from the menu or by right-
clicking with the mouse.
• Installing a package places all of the components of that package on your system in the
correct locations.
• Uninstalling a package removes all components of the package except for configuration
files you have modified.
• Upgrading a package installs the new version and uninstalls all other versions that were
previously installed.
You can also use the Web find option to search the Internet for newly released packages. You
can direct Gnome-RPM to search for particular distributions when you want to look for new
packages. (If you have a slow connection, this option can take some time to fully execute.)
See Section 26.4 for more information about this feature.
Warning
Be careful when using Web find, since there is no way to verify the integrity of the many packages
which are available at numerous repositories. Before installing packages, you should perform a query
on that package to help you determine whether it can be trusted. Packages not produced by Red Hat
are not supported in any way by Red Hat. Refer to Section 26.5.2 to learn more about verifying
packages.
Using Gnome-RPM to perform all of these and many other operations is the same as us-
ing RPM commands from the shell prompt. However, the graphical nature of Gnome-RPM