Chapter 7: Managing Software Packages in Linux
In this chapter, you'll learn what package managers are, how to install, update, and remove software using apt and dnf, and how to manage repositories in Linux.
In Chapter 6 of the LFCA Certification Course, you learned how Linux tracks 2 separate clocks, how to set the correct time zone, how to verify NTP synchronization, and why a drifted clock breaks logs, certificates, and cron jobs in production, and that completed another core piece of the System Administration foundation.
This chapter covers package management, which is how Linux installs, updates, and removes software.
It's something you'll do on every Linux system you ever manage, whether that's adding a new tool, patching a security vulnerability, or cleaning up packages that are no longer needed.
The LFCA exam tests package management directly in the System Administration Fundamentals domain (30%), and the questions cover both the apt command on Debian-based systems and the dnf command on Red Hat-based systems, so this chapter covers both.
Every command in this chapter was tested on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Rocky Linux 9, with each distro variant labeled clearly throughout.