Frequently Asked Questions

RPM Fusion

What is RPM Fusion?

RPM Fusion is a repository of add-on packages for Fedora and EL+EPEL maintained by a group of volunteers. RPM Fusion is not a standalone repository, but an extension of Fedora. RPM Fusion distributes packages that have been deemed unacceptable to Fedora.

What packages are available from RPM Fusion?

See PackageList.

How do I use RPM Fusion?

See Configuration.

What do I need to pay attention to when configuring the repositories

There are a few things to note. In short: you always need to enable the matching repositories from Fedora/EPEL and RPM Fusion together. Verbose:

• Packages in RPM Fusion's rawhide repositories require packages from Fedora's rawhide repositories -- hence enable all rawhide repositories or none at all. Note that you have to disable all non-rawhide repositories if you want to switch completely to Fedora rawhide.
• Packages in RPM Fusion's updates-testing repositories may require packages from fedora- or epel-updates-testing -- hence enable all updates-testing repositories or none at all.
• Packages in RPM Fusions nonfree repos repositories require packages from the free repositories -- you hence can't use the nonfree repositories without the free repositories; but you on the other hand can use the free repositories without the nonfree ones.

Can I use RPM Fusion packages during the installation of Fedora?

Yes, Anaconda (the Fedora installer) supports using external repositories during installation. See Using RPM Fusion in Anaconda for more information.

Why doesn't the Fedora project ship the Software that RPM Fusion offers?

As Fedora is officially affiliated with Red Hat, Inc. in the Fedora Project, Fedora is effectively bound by the same legal restrictions as Red Hat, as a US company, is bound by. This means in particular that software encumbered with US patents cannot be included in Fedora.

Fedora further only wants to ship software that is covered by Free and Open-Source-Software licenses; see Fedora's Licensing Guidelines and its List of Good Licenses for details.

Does RPM Fusion distribute illegal software?

No. RPM Fusion only distributes packages which can be legally re-distributed.

How can I trust that RPM Fusion will work with the Fedora project?

Most RPM Fusion developers are also actively involved in the Fedora project and make sure that RPM Fusion interacts properly with the distributions from Fedora. The contributors also do their best to maintain a the same quality as official Fedora packages.

RPM Fusion further doesn't want to compete with Fedora -- hence RPM Fusion normally does not ship any software that is acceptable in Fedora.

What Fedora versions do you support?

RPM Fusion ships packages for RHEL5 (and its derivatives like CentOS, ScientificLinux and other) and all current Fedora versions (including the development branch rawhide).

RPM Fusion follows the end-of-life policy of the respective "upstream" distributions. In practice this means that shortly after the upstream distribution goes EOL, shortly afterwards the corresponding RPM Fusion repository will go EOL, too. Usually the repositories will stay available for longer, but no new packages or package updates will be added to them and users are strongly encouraged to update to a non-EOL distro version. The repositories for EOLed distributions will sooner or later move to a archive page to make room for repositories for newer releases.

What architectures do you support?

We attempt to support all possible architectures, across all supported Fedora/EL versions. Currently for Fedora 9 and later these are i386, x86_64, ppc and ppc64; EL is limited to i386 and x86_64

How do I report a bug?

Please report all bugs using the Bugzilla. This includes bugs with RPMs as well as bugs related to infrastructure, such as this website.

I would like to see an RPM for package X. What should I do?

Place a request in the wiki and hopefully a maintainer will decide to pick it up. If however you wish to see an additional feature added to an existing package, please file a bug against it in Bugzilla.

How can I contribute?

You can submit your own packages, do QA on existing submissions or help fix bugs . Please see the contributors page for details.

Packages

Why should I use the video drivers provided by RPM Fusion for my ATI and Nvidia cards?

This is described in the RPM Fusion Switcher page.

What packages should I install to be able to play nonfree codecs?

Run this commando from root to get enhanced audio and video support in applications that rely on GStreamer:

# yum install gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-ffmpeg

Run this command from root to get enhanced audio and video support in applications that rely on xine backend:

#yum install xine-lib-extras-freeworld

mplayerplug-in is not available, where did it go?

mplayerplug-in has been pushed to 'obsolete packages' due to new gecko-mediaplayer and thus, is not shipped in any rpmfusion repositories. You have to install gecko-mediaplayer now to have a better support.

Why do I see i686 (or similar) RPMs in the i386 repositories?

Some RPMs are built from binary distributions because the source code is not available, although building from source is always preferred. In these cases, we have little or no control over how the binaries were compiled. So if they were compiled for i686, then they must be presented in an i686 RPM.

Kernel-Modules are also build specifically for i586 or i686 -- hence the kmod packages are marked as i586 and i686, just like the kenrels in Fedora are.

I have a problem with one of the nonfree drivers (amd, broadcom, nvidia, ...) -- can you fix it please?

That depends on the nature of the problem. If the root cause for the problem is in the closed part of the driver then we are not able to fix it -- you have to contact the driver vendor, as only he has access to the source.

RPM Fusion contributors on the other hand of course can fix issues where the packaging is the root cause. If in a doubt file a bug in Bugzilla; the driver maintainers will tell you if they can do anything to fix the issue.

I have multiple 3rd party repos enabled and yum boils out with errors.

Mixing repositories that are not designed to be mixed can lead to trouble, hence you should better not do that. If there is something missing in RPM Fusion that please tell us, maybe we can add it, which will make everything easier for all Fedora users; or better yet, ask the maintainer of the 3rd party repository to join RPM Fusion.