3.7 Installing Updates

As with most operating systems today, each particular release of a CentOS distribution continues to evolve after it has been released to the public. This generally takes the form of bug fixes and security updates and, occasionally, new features that may be downloaded over the internet and installed on your system.

Best practices dictate that the first step after installing CentOS is to make sure any available updates are applied to the system. This can be achieved via the command-line prompt in a Terminal window using the dnf package manager tool. To check for the availability of updates, simply run the following command:

# dnf check-update

Any pending updates may be applied, once again using the dnf tool:

# dnf update

Upon execution, the dnf tool will provide a list of packages that are available for update and prompt for permission to perform the update.

Once the update is complete the installation is essentially finished and CentOS 8 is ready for use.