PackageKit is a free and open-source suite of software applications designed to provide a consistent and high-level abstraction layer for a number of different package management systems. PackageKit was created by Richard Hughes in 2007,[2][3] and first introduced into an operating system as a default application in May 2008 with the release of Fedora 9.[4]
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PackageKit is a system daemon, various graphical front-ends are available
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| Original author(s) | Richard Hughes |
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| Initial release | 2007; 17 years ago (2007) |
| Stable release | 1.3.0[1] / 16 June 2024; 15 days ago (16 June 2024) |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C, C++, Python |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Package management system |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | www |
The suite is cross-platform, though it is primarily targeted at Linux distributions which follow the interoperability standards set out by the freedesktop.org group. It uses the software libraries provided by the D-Bus and Polkit projects to handle inter-process communication and privilege negotiation respectively.
PackageKit seeks to introduce automatic updates without having to authenticate as root, fast-user-switching, warnings translated into the correct locale, common upstream GNOME and KDE tools and one software over multiple Linux distributions.[5]
Although PackageKit is still maintained, no major features have been developed since around 2014, and the package's maintainer suggested that it could be replaced by plugins for other tools, such as Flatpak and Snap as they become more popular. However, a D-Bus interface would still be needed to support managing packages on mutable file systems.[6]
PackageKit runs as a system-activated daemon, named packagekitd, which abstracts out differences between the different systems. A library called libpackagekit allows other programs to interact with PackageKit.[7]
Features include:
pkcon is the official front-end of PackageKit, it operates from the command line.[8]GTK-based:
Qt-based:
A number of different package management systems (known as back-ends) support different abstract methods and signals used by the front-end tools.[9] Supported back-ends include:
