One of the more frustrating features of a Fedora Core installation is its lack of popular multimedia and driver support as well as alternative applications like Abiword. But, with a few simple steps you can easily access a large collection of such software from your system using YUM.

Though Fedora Core 4 software is extensive, the available software has grown so large that many packages can no longer be included with the Fedora Core releases. There's also specialized software that for various reasons such as possible licensing issues aren't included. This is particularly true of multimedia ones and by leaving such software in third-party repositories, Fedora avoids any legal issues. You can add software to your system by accessing software repositories that supporting YUM (Yellowdog Update, Modified). Many of the popular multimedia applications such as video and digital music support can be obtained from third-party repositories using the same simple YUM commands you'd use for Fedora-sponsored software.

This approach heralds a move from thinking of most Linux software included on a few disks to viewing the disk as just a core from which you can expand your installed software as you like from online repositories. Most software is now located on Internet-connected repositories. By integrating YUM into your Fedora system, you can think of that software as an easily installed extension of your current collection. Relying on disk media for your software becomes, in a sense, obsolete.

Using Repositories to Complete Your Installation
A few repositories provide most of the software you'll normally need. Fedora Extras is considered an direct extension of the Fedora Core software collection. Many specialized applications like graphics drivers and file system access, along with multimedia support, are located at rpm.livna.org/fedora. A more complete collection of multimedia support packages are at freshprms.net. Together these repositories make up a set of software sites you can use to provide most of the functionality users expect from an desktop system.

To see what packages are available you can use your Web browser to access the sites. Both Extras and Livna provide simple directory file listing, whereas Freshrpms uses a detailed Web interface.

These sites provide RPM packages for the current as well as previous Fedora Core releases. Download and installation can be simply a matter of using your browser to access the site, downloading the RPM packages directly, and installing them with the installation tool. Firefox will let you do both a download and install in one simple operation. On a Gnome desktop already downloaded packages can be installed with a simple right-click and install selection invoking system-config-packages to do the installation.

This simple kind of operation can work for packages that don't require dependent packages, like the NTFS file system support or the Nvidia graphics driver. However, this approach becomes more complicated when you need to download and install dependent packages first. This is usually the case with multimedia packages like Mplayer or Xine. Instead of manually trying to locate each dependent package and install them in the correct order, you can use YUM to do it for you.

These sites support YUM, letting you use a simple yum command to both download and install a package, as well as any supporting libraries. This makes installation a very simple procedure.

To use YUM on a software repository, YUM has to be configured to access it. This is a simple matter of listing the site's URL, both its Web address and directory location. Configurations for repositories are put in the repo files located in the /etc/yum.repos.d directory on your Linux system. Fedora Core already includes a configuration for Fedora Extras. You'll have to add configurations for Livna and Freshrpms before you can access them. However, both Livna and Freshrpms provide RPM packages on their Web sites that, when installed, automatically set up the needed YUM configuration files For Livna this is the livna-release4 package and for Freshrpms it's freshrpms-release.

Fedora Extras
The Fedora Extras project is designed for packages that either duplicate or not considered essential to the Fedora Core. If you're looking for an application that was once part of Fedora, chances are you'll find it here. For example, the office applications included with Fedora Core are now limited to Office.org, whereas Abiword and KOffice are now located in the Extras repositories (see Table 1).

The Fedora Extras and Fedora Core repositories are already configured for use by YUM. To download any Fedora Extras package, enter the yum command with the install option on a command line (on your desktop open a terminal window first [right-click on desktop]). The package will be detected along with any dependent software and you'll be asked to confirm installation. The download and installation will be automatic. Check fedoraproject.org/extras/4/ to find the list of available Fedora Extras. The following installs gnumeric, which is now a Fedora Extras package: yum install gnumeric. To install KOffice from Fedora Extras use yum install koffice

rpm.livna.org
rpm.livna.org provides popular software as well as code not included with Fedora Core or Fedora Extras because of licensing issues. Several of the more popular packages are the ATI and Nvidia graphics drivers, support for the Windows NTFS file system, and the XviD DivX codec. Livna specializes in configuring sometimes difficult software for compatibility with Fedora Core. For example, you can download the Nvidia Linux driver directly from the Nvidia Web site and try to install it on your Fedora Core system. But there can be complications and the driver could need tweaking. As an alternative, Livna provides a version of the driver that has already been configured for Fedora Core. A safer and more reliable approach is to simply install the Livna package for the Nvidia driver. Livna also provides ATI driver packages.

To configure YUM on your system to access rpm.livna.org just install the livna-release4 package for Fedora Core 4. Fedora Core 3 and older versions use a different package. Check the Livna configuration page at rpm.livna.org/configuration for details.

Install livna-release4.rpm from Gnome or use the rpm command. With Gnome, just right-click and select install. With the rpm command just use rpm -ivh rpm.livna.org/livna-release4.rpm.

To see what packages are available on Livna, use your Web browser to go to www.livna.org/fedora. Here you'll find a listing of directories for each supported release, currently 1 through 4. Select your release directory, then choose your architecture such as i386 (32-bit) or x86_64 (64-bit). You can then choose from updates, testing , source, code, and the package applications. The RPM software packages can be found in the RPMS.livna directory. Here you'll see a simple file listing of all available packages. Certain packages don't need dependent packages, like graphic drivers and the NTFS kernel module package. Those you can download and install directly with your browser.

Freshrpms.net Freshrpms.net provides an extensive list of multimedia packages including packages for DVD Video like Mplayer along with supporting libraries. Here you'll also find MP3 support. Several of these packages are also available on Livna, but the collection on Freshrpms is a bit more extensive.

For Freshrpms.net just download and install the freshrpms-release package. A link to this package can be found on ayo.freshrpms.net. Click on the Fedora Core 4 link to list the freshrpms-release packages for Fedora Core 4. The package you want is something like freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

With your Web browser you can choose to download and install at once (see Figure 1). Otherwise you could download the package first and then install from Gnome or use the rpm command. With Gnome, just right-click and select install. With the rpm command, download the package first and then just use rpm -ivh freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

Installing Some Popular Packages
Once configured, installation is a simple matter of opening a terminal window and entering the command yum along with the install options followed by the name of the software package you want to install. For example, to install Abiword you just enter yum install abiword. YUM does the rest, first locating the package, downloading it, and then doing the installation. It will also be careful to select the package for your architecture like x86_64 for 64-bit or i686 for32-bit. YUM will ask for confirmation before installing. You can also use yum to remove and update packages. Check the yum Man page for options. Some detailed examples are shown here for some of the more popular packages like mplayer and xine, as well as Gstreamer and MP3 support (see Figure 3).