How To Remove/Uninstall Software packages from CentOS, RHEL, Fedora?


Different Linux distribution comes with different tools to manage software packages on it. RPM-based Linux distributions such as CentOS, RHEL, and Fedora use the yum package manager to install, remove, and manage packages on them.

In this article, we will discuss removing an installed package from the command line in CentOS, RHEL, and Fedora. This also applies to other RPM-based Linux distributions.

Yellow Dog Updater Modified (YUM)

YUM was originally developed for Yellow Dog Linux(YDL) as a replacement for yellow dog updater. Later it was used by Redhat and today it becomes the default tool for various operating systems like CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mandrake Linux including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc.

Dandified Yellow Dog Updater Modified (DNF)

DNF is an updated version of yum that is used to install, remove, and update packages. It is the default package manager of fedora since fedora 22. It was launched to address issues like poor performance, high memory usage, and slowness of its iterative dependencies resolution in Yum.

RPM (Red Hat Package Manager)

Yum and Dnf are front ends these can fetch packages from a remote location and resolves the dependencies. While rpm is a lower level tool that works with .rpm packages like dpkg, which works with .deb files in debian based systems.

How to remove a package from CentOS, RHEL?

To remove a package in CentOS or RHEL, use the following command in your terminal –

sudo yum erase package_name

For example –

sudo yum erase httpd

Remove a package using rpm package manager

You can use rpm command to remove a package –

sudo rpm -e package_name

or

sudo rpm --erase package_name

For example-

sudo rpm -e httpd

How to remove a package from fedora?

To remove a package in fedora use the following command in your terminal. Execute all the commands with superuser privileges –

dnf remove package_name

For example-

dnf remove httpd

Use the rpm package manager to remove a package in Fedora

You can also use rpm command in Fedora to remove a package –

rpm -e package_name

or

rpm --erase package_name

For example –

rpm -e httpd

Conclusion

Now by reading this article you are able to remove a software package from an RPM-based Linux distribution. If you have any thoughts on the topic you can share it with us in the comments below.

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