yum is mainly used by rpm based distributions to manage operating system packages. yum have a lot of features but one of the most used feature is removing packages from operating system. In this tutorial we will look how to delete or remove packages with yum.

We need root privileges all uninstall operations. We will provide root privilege with sudo command.

Uninstall Package

We will start by removing single package from operating system. This command will run rpm command with required options. than remove related cache and info files. We will use remove option and the package name we want to remove. In this example we will remove package named tmux.

$ sudo yum remove tmux

Uninstall Multiple Packages

If we need remove multiple packages with yum what can we do. Nothing more than providing packages by delimiting with spaces. We can remove multiple packages just providing their names by separating their names with space.

$ sudo yum remove tmux wget unzip

Uninstall Group of Packages

Yum provides groups to make multiple package management easier. For example Desktop LXDE is provided as group name LXDE Desktop . If can uninstall group and their related packages with remove too. We will prefix group name with @ to specify provided name is group or add group before remove. In this example we will remove LXDE Desktop.

$ sudo yum remove @"LXDE Desktop"

Or we will add group before remove.

$ sudo yum group remove "LXDE Desktop"

Automatically Remove with `-y` To Accept Prompt

While removing some files we may prompted to answer whether we are sure to remove given package. We can automatically answer this question yes by providing -y .

$ sudo yum remove tmux -y