How to enable the EPEL repository on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 / Oracle Linux 8?

Large Linux distributions have a large number of packages in their repositories. These distributions base their stability on the freezing of the versions of the mentioned packages. However, it is always possible to add external repositories to install packages that are not in the official repositories. Of course, these repositories have to be reliable and quite secure. Today, I will teach you how to enable the EPEL on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 / Oracle Linux 8 repository.

What is the EPEL repository?

The Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is an unofficial repository that provides a variety of packages that are not in the official RHEL and derivative repositories. It is quite reliable and secure, so it is highly recommended to enable it if we need any packages available in this repository.

Keep in mind that Linux distirbutions such as RHEL and its derivatives, as well as Debian, Ubuntu and SUSE, incorporate packages tested by them. In this immense effort, there are many very good packages that cannot be added to the repositories.

For that reason, these repositories are born, to be able to install many extra packages without much effort… let us get to work.

Enable the EPEL repository on CentOS 8 / RHEL 8 / Oracle Linux 8

The EPEL project is fantastic. Not only because of the large number of packages available but also because of the ease of use. To add it, you have to download and install an RPM package that they put at our disposal.

So, open a terminal and upgrade the system.

:~$ sudo dnf update

This way we will have all the packages updated with the built-in security patches.

Now install the repository configuration package with the following command:

:~$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Then, check that everything is OK with the new repository. So, list all the enabled repository.

:~$ sudo dnf repolist -v

As you can see in the image, the repository was correctly added. That is to say, we will be able to use it.

You can see all available packages with the following command:

:~$ sudo dnf repository-packages epel list

The image above shows that there are many packages available to be installed thanks to the EPEL repository.

Conclusion

In conclusion, adding the EPEL repository is almost an obligation if we want to counter many extra packages for our distribution. On the other hand, EPEL is a safe, reliable and easy to enable repository. To be so simple, the benefits are many.

Also, you can read How to enable Sudo on Debian 10?

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