The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) was developed by Red Hat in order to provide some structure for software management. It provides all of the customary software management features which are as follows:
- Software installation, including resolution of software dependencies during the process
- Various reports on the installed software
- Software verification and control
- The ability for users to package their own software so that it can also be managed
Most RPM-based distributions are sponsored by a company that also sells an enhanced version of the distribution and provide extensively, paid support. This also means that unified administrative utilities are available, at least in the paid version, and often in the free version with somewhat reduced features. Many administrators prefer this approach, which makes the most common administrative tasks available through a single starting place.
The most common distributions using this format are Red Hat (and the paid version, Red Hat Enterprise Linux or RHEL) and SuSE (the free version is known as OpenSuSE and the paid version is often referred to as SuSE Linux Enterprise Server or SLES).
