why yum didnt work but rpm did?
 

hi guys

this is more of a fact finding mission than solving a problem

was just curios,i was trying to install vlc media player (as the default media player wasnt playing some video tutorials i have and was battling installing on centos7 after googling a bit i found threads that were saying you needed to add two repos then run:

yum install vlc

i added the repos with yum -y install epel-release
then tried to run the yum install vlc...found nothing...i updated yum and tried again...nothing
running the command again though the terminal was telling me that EL 7 was installed

i then downloaded and installed the rpm from here:

http://li.nux.ro/repos.html

and installed it...and vlc installed

why is this...sorry just trying to learn about this stuff..

VLC is not located in the default repositories in CentOS ver.7... You need to enable the EPEL repositories to use yum to install it...

VLC isn't in the EPEL repo for CentOS 7 (that's what the OP tried and it didn't work). You need the nux-desktop repo for it (that's what the OP tried and it did work).

yes thats true...but why didnt it work installing the repo via the terminal...but did when i used the rpm? are rpm's more up to date/reliable than commands you find on the internet? ...is that it?

There are two different repos at play here, don't confuse them.

First you installed epel, epel on CentOS 7 does not contain vlc, so when you then tried to install vlc, it failed

Then you installed nux-desktop, nux-desktop on CentOS 7 does contain vlc, so when you then tried to install vlc, it worked

The difference was simply which repo you added, not the way that you added it.
You just happened to enable the epel repo with yum, and enabled the nux-desktop repo with rpm. You could have easily enabled either of them by editing the yum repo files by hand instead, the results would have been the same. You simply needed to add the repo that contained vlc, and epel wasn't it.

Also, you should seriously consider installing and configuring yum-plugin-priorities to prevent yum from pulling in newer/incompatible libraries from these 3rd party sources and breaking half your system.

Definitely add yum-plugin-priorities to protect the base repos etc http://www.server-world.info/en/note...itial_conf&f=6
https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalRe...s/Repositories
https://wiki.centos.org/PackageManag...Yum/Priorities

as i recall the yum-priorites is for 5 and 6

with 7 the reops were merged ( official ones)

https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalRe...s/Repositories

BUT multi media on rhel/cent/sl has been a low priority
with rhel making a rather lousy home desktop OS
and in a office setting there should be a IT Dept. to install the needed things

and with vlc and mplayer on a headless server is a non starter
--redhat docs
https://access.redhat.com/documentat...de/ch-yum.html

... Which is why;
A) I should have kept my "mouth" shut about it, &
B) Why I prefer Debian package management over RedHat...

It's very much for 7 as well once you start adding in 3rd party repos, as the OP has.

Even just adding in EPEL and RPMForge: