APT command equivalents on Fedora with DNF

APT is the package manager/dependency solver for the Debian ecosystem, i.e. it manages .deb packages installed by the DPKG program. Fedora software is based on .rpm packages, and thus uses DNF, the package manager/dependency solver for the RPM program, instead. This document gives a brief overview of the most common APT commands one might find in tutorials and their DNF equivalents.

APT vs. DNF commands

Table 1. Apt vs DNF commands
APT commandDNF commandnotes

apt update

apt-get update

dnf check-update

This command is rarely needed, as dnf updates its package cache automatically when it is stale. A cache update can be forced by appending —refresh to other commands, e.g. dnf upgrade —refresh

apt upgrade

apt-get upgrade

dnf upgrade

apt full-upgrade

apt-get dist-upgrade

dnf distro-sync or

dnf system-upgrade (see note)

While distro-sync is the most direct functional equivalent, dnf system-upgrade should be used to upgrade from one release to another, e.g. from Fedora 31 to 32. This is a multi-step process as described here.

apt remove

apt-get remove

dnf remove

apt purge

apt-get purge

—-

apt autoremove

apt-get autoremove

dnf autoremove

apt search

apt-cache search

dnf search

With the exception of the distribution upgrade working differently and DNF updating the cache automatically, the commands are very similar. More info on DNF can be found here.

Why is APT in the Fedora repositories?

APT can not be used to install packages on Fedora, you have to use DNF instead.

The apt command on Fedora used to - until Fedora 32 - actually be APT-RPM, which basically mapped normal apt commands so that they worked with Fedora’s RPM package management system.

However, APT-RPM is unmaintained, broken & insecure, and so was dropped in favour of shipping the actual Debian APT software. Since APT exclusively deals with .deb packages, the apt command can no longer be used to manage Fedora packages. Its purpose is now purely as a tool for people building packages for Debian-based distributions on a Fedora system.