4 Installing Software on Oracle Linux

Software packages are installed on a system by using standard dnf commands and depend on the system having the appropriate yum repositories enabled.

Use the dnf install command to install a package and any of its dependencies:

sudo dnf install package_name

Note:

dnf makes no distinction between installing and upgrading a kernel package. If you run dnf install for a package that's already installed on the system, and a newer version of the package is available, the command upgrades the package. You can use the dnf upgrade command, or the synonymous dnf update command, to upgrade all packages installed on the system. See Updating Software on Oracle Linux.

The system notifies you of any extra packages that might be installed and prompts you to confirm whether to go ahead with the installation. For example:

Last metadata expiration check: 1:38:46 ago on Mon 14 Apr 2025 13:47:07 BST.
Dependencies resolved.
=======================================================================================================
 Package                Architecture    Version                       Repository                  Size
=======================================================================================================
Reinstalling:
 dnf-automatic          noarch          4.14.0-17.0.1.el9             ol9_baseos_latest           51 k

Transaction Summary
=======================================================================================================

Total download size: 51 k
Installed size: 54 k
Is this ok [y/N]
 

You can bypass the confirmation check in a dnf install command by using the -y option.

For a list of dnf commands that are commonly used to manage DNF packages and repositories, see DNF Command References.