One popular graphical RPM management tool is KPackage, supplied with the KDE Desktop. (You can find this product at www.kde.org). KPackage offers basic package-management functionality. It can install and uninstall packages and display information about installed and available packages’ contents and headers. In addition, KPackage supports a wide variety of package formats in addition to RPMs. Be aware, however, that KPackage cannot automatically resolve dependencies. When you are installing new software packages, any dependencies required by that software must first be manually installed.

When started, KPackage presents a basic two-paned interface.

The left-hand panel lists Installed packages already on the system, Updated packages available to update the system, New packages available for installation, and All packages (both installed and available for installation/upgrade). When displaying package lists, KPackage organizes the displayed packages into categories based on their group.

The right-hand panel lists information about the package currently selected in the left-hand panel. Information displayed includes the package Properties, listing the package’s header, and the File List of files that package owns. Figure 8-8 shows this panel on the right side of the interface.

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Figure 8-8: The KPackage interface, showing properties of the selected package

After packages have been selected, they can be installed or uninstalled, as shown in Figure 8-9

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Figure 8-9: KPackage installs the selected package on your command.

In addition to supporting RPM, KPackage can be used on systems that use other packaging methods. Current versions of KPackage support Debian’s dpkg and the BSD projects’ package formats as well as RPM.