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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

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2 Answers 2

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"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.

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  • Thanks for clearing that up. Also could you tell me how can we determine the name of the file to run to use the application ? Normally in windows we would look for an executable in the folder of the installed app. what would the linux approach be here after the app is installed ?
    – Rajeshwar
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:54
  • @Rajeshwar try this to see which files are installed by the package. The files to run would be in /usr/bin. You can also try something like which vlc or locate vlc.
    – muru
    Oct 21, 2014 at 16:57
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$> 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.

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