Fedora PackageKit

The Fedora desktop comes with a new graphical way to add or remove software. Packagekit offers many new enhancements and makes installing new software on your desktop much faster and easier. To access Packagekit  on the Gnome  main menu click on System --- Administration --- Add/Remove Software.

Once you can see the Add Remove Software window you'll notice a small menu across the top including System --- Filter --- Help. In the top left corner is a search field that can be used to search for packages by keyword. Also to the left site of the Add Remove Software window is a column that includes package categories. These categories make it easy to narrow down the results depending on what type of package you are looking for. If you're looking to install or view a list of games you don't want to sort through Admin tools or any other categories, so just click on the games category on the left and all results in the display window on the right will be games. You may notice that many packages in the display window have a different icon next to them. (an open box instead of a closed box) The open box icon means that this package has already been installed or unpacked.

On the top of the window if you select System --- Software sources (Software sources also has a small CD icon)

You will be given the Software Sources window which includes a list of Repositories available for you to download packages from. You can see repositories that are enabled if they have a check mark in the box provided. If you want to enable additional repositories simply click the box. To disable a repo click on a box that already has a check mark in it. Select the close button when you're finished.

Packagekit also includes a list of Filters available which are Installed, Development, graphical,and Free. This part of the menu also allows you to Hide subpackages.

After selecting  a package to install you can see additional information about the package at the bottom of the window. Here we have four tabs to view. The first one is Description which just gives us a quick description of the selected package. File List shows us which files are included in the package. Depends on shows any additional packages needed to run the selected package. The Required by tab shows if the package is required by anything. Below the lower display window you can see the selected package Software source is displayed and also the package size.