Most people running directly from the desktop will see urpmi through the Mandrake Control Center (command name : drakconf). When the control center starts up, click on Software Management (in the left hand sidebar). This gives you four choices. You can install software packages, remove packages, search for and install updates (very important for security and bug fixes) or add new software installation sources. When you choose to install or remove software, you are actually running another program called Rpmdrake (comamnd name : rpmdrake). When the Rpmdrake window comes up (Figure 1) you'll be able to search for packages. At the top of the Rpmdrake window, there's a small search field with the default search criteria set to "in names". The example below shows a search for "word" which found, among other things, the Abiword package. You can also search more broadly by selecting "in descriptions". That may actually take a little longer but it gives you a more flexible search, particularly if you don't know the package name.
Figure 1 : Searching for and installing packages from the Mandriva Control Center. Click the image for a full size screenshot. When you have found a piece of software that you are looking for, click the check box next to the name. If additional packages are required, Rpmdrake will inform you of it. When you have everything picked out that you want, click Install. If you knew what package you wanted to install, you could easily do it from the command line (as root) like this. urpmi abiword It's that easy. |
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Installing software with Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) is done with the urpmi command. This is a great tool because urpmi takes care of all that nasty checking for prerequisite software. When installing an RPM package using urpmi, you will sometimes be told that other packages are needed and asked whether you want urpmi to automatically install them. The right answer is almost always yes. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me show you how it's done.
