Chapter 5. Accessing and Running Applications
In This Chapter
Getting and installing software packages
Getting Fedora and RHEL software updates
Managing RPM packages
Running desktop applications
Using emulators to run applications from other operating systems
Running DOS applications
Running Windows applications with WINE
Running applications in virtual environments (KVM and Xen)
Fedora and RHEL come with thousands of software applications, covering every major category of desktop, server, and programming software. By accessing some third-party, Fedora-specific software repositories on the Internet, you have access to many more software packages. Often, getting a new software package downloaded and installed is as simple as running a single yum command. As always, you should apply due diligence when choosing what to download. See the section on downloading and installing applications with yum for more on this.
Some of the same tools you use to get and install software packages in Fedora and RHEL (such as yum and rpm commands) can also be used to manage your installed software and get updates or security patches when they become available. Options in those tools let you query which packages you installed, as well as list and verify the contents of those packages. Likewise, GUI tools such as PackageKit can be used to automatically grab and install new and updated packages as they become available.
Once an application is installed, launching it can be as easy as it is in any friendly desktop ...
Get Fedora® 11 and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® Bible now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
