AlmaLinux or Rocky’s official repository doesn’t offer all packages we need to install various common software. Hence, to get the packages and dependencies to set up various third-party applications there is a repository called EPEL- Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux that offers additional packages to RedHat & its based Linux distributions. EPEL is administered by the Fedora Special Interest Group and they also ensure the high quality of the additional packages for Enterprise Linux.
Whereas PowerTools is another repository that meant to supply mostly developer-related packages, tools, and libraries. This one is also created for RedHat and its derivatives such as CentOS, AlmaLinux, and others. Moreover, many software packages available in EPEL repo sometimes require PowerTools repo to get installed properly. This repository mainly requires when you want to build some applications using their source code.
Install EPEL repo on AlmaLinux/Rocky
We don’t need to go through multiple commands or URLs to add and enable the EPEL repository on our Linux. We simply can use the DNF package manager to install and enable it.
sudo dnf install epel-release
Once the installation is completed, let’s enable it:
sudo dnf config-manager --enable epel
Enable PowerToools
The below-given command will integrate the PowerTools repository on not this AlmaLinux but also for CentOS, Rocky, and RHEL.
sudo dnf install yum-utils
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools
Run system update
To make sure the system has recognized the newly added repo and let it install if any update available through these two repos, run the system update command once.
sudo dnf update
Thanks. I googled for days trying to get PowerTools enabled on Alma Linux 8.5 and this is the only result that worked. I need PowerTools for openbox on a barebones Xorg install on Alma.