RPM Database Info
 

Between my initial system setup and now, I've installed/updated alot of packages, most of which I dont even remember are on my system. Is there a way that I can query/view the rpm database on my system to see what packages are installed and a description of what they provide and where they are installed? I know rpm -qa does a package listing, but I want something with a bit more detail in terms of what exactly these packages are.

Depends on your system and what you've got installed, but some of the graphical RPM tools will display this info. rpmdrake (from Mandrake 9.1) for example.

Depends on what distro, and what tools you have installed.

Cool

I'm using fedora core 4 .... know any tools I can use for that distro ?

The command-line tool Yum is the primary updater on Fedora Core. You can read the tutorial here. There is a GUI for it called Yum Extender (yumex); that you can install with "yum install yumex".

Fedora does not have a good gui tool, so you maybe better off installing, synaptic or kpackage if you are a KDE user. You can also use "rpm -qa" but the package list is long and it will take ages for the query to complete.

:D They already have, but they want more info/description of the packages rpm -qa returns ;)

Yumex is supposed to be pretty good with this, but I just clicked around a bit on my FC4 install, and under the desktop menu I found "Add/Remove Applications" or you can run it from the command line with system-config-packages (as root)

Cool

I should have paid more attention to the question;). Anyway kpackage, synaptic, yumex etc should do the job. I don't think system-config-packages shows as much info as the other apps I mentioned.