Installing package why is rpm and yum used here - why not just one?

Question

I am attempting to install VLC media player on my new Fedora 20 machine. On the VLC website it states that you could install it usign the following commands (which i still did not try) as I want to know exactly what they do

 $> su -
    #> rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
    #> yum install vlc
    #> yum install mozilla-vlc (optional)

Now here are my questions:

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

has the arguments i (install) v (verbose) h (hash) so this basically installs the rpm to the system correct ? Then why use yum after that ?

Also if yum does have vlc in its repo then when I go like this

[admin@localhost ~]$ yum list *vlc*
Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
Error: No matching Packages to list

why isnt anything listed ?

Also when it is installed how would i know what command should I run to launch the app ?

This makes me think that the rpm command simply adds the vlc rpm to the yum repo and then we do a yum to do the install ? I am a bit confused here and any help explaining this would be appreciated. Thanks

Answer 1

"rpm command simply adds the vlc rpm to the yum repo"...

Close. I think the package installed using rpm adds the RPM Fusion repository, after which yum can install packages from that repository. Obviously, the first package itself could not be installed via yum, since it is not present in the repositories currently configured for yum. So it had to be manually downloaded and installed.

vlc is available in the RPM Fusion repository (but not in the official repositories for Fedora, I presume), so unless you add this repository, yum list won't show anything for vlc.

Answer 2

$> su -
    #> rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
    #> yum install vlc
    #> yum install mozilla-vlc (optional)

Explanation

rpm -ivh

• Install
• Verbose
• Show Hash

This installs the package showing a rotating hash mark until the install finishes. RPM has no dependency checking. Using yum adds the package to the yum repository and rechecks the dependencies. As muru states, using yum list fails, as the repository doesn't exist in your repo list. This is also the reason you must use the Fully Qualified Link when using rpm.