Chapter 21. RpmDrake: Package Management

Install Software
Searching packages
Mandrake choices
All packages, alphabetical
All packages, by group
All packages, by size
All packages, by selection state
All packages, by medium repository
All packages, by update availability
Remove Software
Mandrake Update
The Software Media Manager
Package Management through the Command Line
Installing and Removing Packages
Media Management
Tricks and Recipes

When coming from a Windows environment, you'll know the problem, that every piece of software has its own method of installation: either a MSI file, an InstallShield setup, a self extracting executable or maybe simply a zip file. When installing software you always risk ending up with some of your applications not working anymore, as the recently downloaded tool may have replaced some .dll-files with older versions without any warning. This is why the GNU/Linux community went a totally different way and created a software package management system to take care of all those problems: rpm. As always under GNU/Linux this is a command line tool, with lots of nice features, but maybe a bit overloaded for the average user. Therefore Mandrake Linux provides you with a graphical software installer: RpmDrake.

RpmDrake consists of four different tools, which you access through the Main Menu (Configuration->Packaging) or via the Mandrake Control Center in the section Software Management: Figure 21.1

Figure 21.1. Software Management in the Mandrake Control Center

Software Management in the Mandrake Control Center

We recommend that you access RpmDrake via the Mandrake Control Center.