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Azure Linux uses DNF5 as its package manager and ships software as RPM packages. This article covers the specifics of how Azure Linux is packaged, what's new in DNF5, and where to look when paths or tools still carry YUM-era names.
Note
Azure Linux 4.0 is now in preview and is strictly limited to evaluation and testing purposes. It's not suitable for production use.
DNF5
DNF5 is the latest major release of DNF, the package manager maintained by the upstream RPM software management community. Compared to DNF4, DNF5 provides:
- Faster dependency resolution.
- Reduced memory usage.
- An improved internal architecture.
- Full backward compatibility with existing YUM repository configurations.
The command-line surface is intentionally close to yum and dnf 4, so existing scripts and CI pipelines generally work without changes. The dnf and yum commands on Azure Linux are provided by DNF5.
RPM packages
Software on Azure Linux is delivered as RPM packages. Each .rpm file bundles:
- Binaries, libraries, scripts, and other payload files.
- Configuration files marked with
%configso they survive upgrades. - Metadata: name, version, release, architecture, dependencies, file list, signatures, and changelog.
DNF resolves dependencies, fetches the required .rpm files from configured repositories, verifies their signatures, and hands them to the rpm library to install or upgrade. You can interact with installed packages directly using rpm (for example, rpm -qa, rpm -qf <path>, rpm -V <pkg>), but for installs and upgrades use DNF so that dependency resolution stays correct.
YUM, DNF, and DNF5
RPM-based distributions have moved through three generations of front-end tooling:
YUM → DNF → DNF5
Each generation kept the on-disk repository format compatible, so you still see paths and names like /etc/yum.repos.d/ and yum.conf on current Azure Linux systems. They're aliases into DNF5, not separate tools, and you can use either name in scripts.
Related content
For more information about DNF5 and the RPM ecosystem, see the following resources:
- DNF5 documentation: Official user and reference documentation for the DNF5 package manager.
- RPM software management on GitHub: Upstream organization that maintains DNF, RPM, and related tooling.