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RPM Fusion

RPM Fusion is the de facto standard third-party repository for Fedora, and what most of this site assumes. It comes in three parts:

Why it exists

Fedora's exclusions have two different causes, and RPM Fusion's split mirrors them. Some software is free and open source but covered by software patents, or otherwise risky for Red Hat to distribute at scale from the United States; that is what free holds. Other software is redistributable but not open source, which puts it outside Fedora's licensing policy whatever the patent position; that is nonfree. In both cases the code is legal to run and the packaging is uncontroversial. Fedora's own guidelines are what keep it out.

Who maintains it

A group of volunteers, most of whom are also active Fedora packagers. RPM Fusion follows the Fedora packaging guidelines, and its sponsorship model runs through Fedora's: only Fedora sponsors can sponsor a new RPM Fusion packager. What differs is policy on what may be shipped, not who is doing the shipping or how carefully.

The project dates to a merger. Three separate add-on repositories — Livna, Dribble and Freshrpms — announced in November 2007 that they would combine, and completed the merge in November 2008. Before that, a Fedora desktop needed packages from several mutually inconsistent sources; consolidating them is the reason a single third-party repository became the norm.

Enabling free and nonfree

The release packages are per-Fedora-release. $(rpm -E %fedora) expands to the running release number, so this is the same command RPM Fusion's own configuration page publishes and it needs no editing:

sudo dnf install \
  https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm \
  https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Install both even if you only came for one of them. The NVIDIA driver is in nonfree, the multimedia packages are mostly in free, and several nonfree packages depend on free.

Then refresh and reboot before installing anything that builds a kernel module:

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
sudo systemctl reboot

AppStream metadata

Since dnf5, the metadata that makes RPM Fusion packages show up in GNOME Software and KDE Discover is not pulled in automatically:

sudo dnf install rpmfusion-free-appstream-data rpmfusion-nonfree-appstream-data

Tainted

A deliberate second opt-in, needed for encrypted DVD playback:

sudo dnf install rpmfusion-free-release-tainted

What it holds is covered where it is used — see Multimedia and Codecs for libdvdcss.

On atomic desktops

Silverblue and Kinoite layer the release packages instead, and need a reboot before the repositories are usable:

sudo rpm-ostree install \
  https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm \
  https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

At a major release upgrade the release packages have to be replaced in the same transaction as the rebase, or the upgrade will not resolve. RPM Fusion documents that as:

sudo rpm-ostree update \
  --uninstall rpmfusion-free-release --uninstall rpmfusion-nonfree-release \
  --install rpmfusion-free-release --install rpmfusion-nonfree-release

RPM Fusion documents the atomic case in full on its OSTree page.

Sources