Showing other installable versions of packages on Fedora 28

Today I write about how you can list all installable versions of a package in Fedora.

Why you might want to see different versions of a package

While the latest version of a package is normally what you want to install there may be times when you want to install an older one.

In some instances, there may be a bug with the latest installed package which requires you to install an earlier version. In Fedora especially where the latest and greatest packages are available to users this may mean a package might not entirely work.

Or a new version of the package may have modified or removed a feature you require from the package. Meaning that you need to ensure you load up the older more useful version.

In these events, you are able to install an earlier version of the package to use and resolve these issues.

Viewing all available versions of a package

To view all versions of packages available you can run the following command.

dnf --showduplicates list <package name>

This will display the versions available for that package. For example when I run this on the firefox package I see:

Available Packages
firefox.x86_64 59.0.2-1.fc28 fedora
firefox.x86_64 61.0-4.fc28 updates

Using this information you can install any version of a package you wish.

If you want to see what version is available in a different version of Fedora you can use the --release flag.

This should help you find older versions of the packages you use if required.