Enable EPEL and PowerTools on AlmaLinux 8

In this guide, we want to teach you How To Enable EPEL and PowerTools on AlmaLinux 8.

what you read in this post?

- What is EPEL?
- What is PowerTools?
Enable EPEL and PowerTools on AlmaLinux 8

What is EPEL?

EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) is an open-source and free community-based repository project from the Fedora team which provides 100% high-quality add-on software packages for Linux distribution including RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux.

EPEL is not an official part of the RHEL subscription or an official offering from Red Hat. But it can come in handy for admins and developers who work with RHEL and need a few utilities packaged for RHEL from a source they can feel good about.

What is PowerTools?

PowerTools is a repository that acts as a container for libraries and developer tools. This repository is available on RHEL/ CentOS but not enabled by default. Some of the most popular EPEL, “Extra packages for Enterprise Linux,” rely on PowerTools packages. You should install PowerTools on your system if the EPEL repository is already enabled.

The PowerTools repository comprises many packages that require dependencies for installing other applications or creating applications from source code. These applications include window managers, audio programs, network management tools and system administration, chat clients, statistics/math packages, development tools, productivity applications, file managers, emulators, graphic programs, games, etc.

Enable EPEL and PowerTools on AlmaLinux 8

To complete this guide, you must log in to your server as a non-root user with sudo privileges. To do this, you can follow our guide the Initial Server Setup with AlmaLinux 8.

Install EPEL repository on AlmaLinux 8

At this point, you can simply use one single command to install the EPEL repo on almaLinux 8:

sudo dnf install epel-release

When your installation is completed, enable your EPEL repo by running the command below:

sudo dnf config-manager --enable epel

Enable PowerTools on AlmaLinux 8

To enable PowerTools on your server, you need to install the yum-utils on your server.

yum-utils is a collection of tools and programs for managing yum repositories, installing debug packages, source packages, extended information from repositories, and administration.

To install it, run the following command:

sudo dnf install yum-utils

Then, use the dnf config-manager command to enable the PowerTools. It manages main and repository DNF configuration options, toggles which repositories are enabled or disabled, and adds new repositories.

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools

Finally, run the system update command to make sure the system has recognized the newly added repo and let it install if any update is available through these two repos: