Copr is a build-system for anyone in the Fedora community. It hosts thousands of projects for various purposes and audiences. Some of them should never be installed by anyone, some are already being transitioned to the official Fedora Linux repositories, and the rest is somewhere in between. Copr gives you the opportunity to install 3rd party software that is not available in Fedora Linux repositories, try nightly versions of your dependencies, use patched builds of your favorite tools to support some non-standard use-cases, and just experiment freely.
If you don’t know how to enable a repository or if you are concerned about whether is it safe to use Copr, please consult the project documentation.
This article takes a closer look at interesting projects that recently landed in Copr.
chatGPT-shell-cli
This year it seems that anywhere you look, ChatGPT is there. This time we have a lightweight ChatGPT and DALL-E client, written in Bash, called chatGPT-shell-cli. Look for the “Commands” section at chatGPT-shell-cli for usage. This Bash script can be especially useful for systems without standard dependencies such as Python or Node.js.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides chatgpt-shell-cli for Fedora 37, 38, Fedora Rawhide, RHEL8, RHEL9, and others. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable kylegospo/chatGPT-shell-cli sudo dnf install chatgpt-shell-cli
Note that an OpenAI API key is required to use this script. You may create an account and get a free API Key at OpenAI.
Hyprland
Hyprland is a beautiful looking compositor for Wayland. It provides dynamic tiling with multiple layouts, smooth animations, and endless customization options. Similarly to Sway or i3, it has a simple configuration file that doesn’t require you to know the programming language it was written in.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides Hyprland for Fedora 37, 38, and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable carlwgeorge/hyprland sudo dnf install hyprland
Wezterm
Wezterm is a modern terminal emulator that runs on all the major operating systems. It has built-in support for terminal multiplexing, rendering images, emojis, GPU acceleration, and many more features.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides Wezterm for Fedora 37, 38, and Fedora Rawhide. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable zjlin/majesty-dubbed-skyline sudo dnf install wezterm
htpdate
htpdate is a time synchronization client for the HTTP Time Protocol (HTP). Is it better than Network Time Protocol (NTP) which is used in Fedora by default? It is not! You should use NTP if you can. However, NTP sometimes doesn’t work because of proxy or firewall restrictions. That’s when HTP and htpdate become very useful.
Installation instructions
The repo currently provides htpdate for Fedora 37, 38, Fedora Rawhide, Fedora ELN, RHEL8, RHEL9, and others. To install it, use these commands:
sudo dnf copr enable whitehara/htpdate sudo dnf install htpdate
Alexander Matrunich
Thank you! Hyprland looks very interesting!
Jason
Indeed Hyprland looks interesting. I however have been using a different copr repo that has my hyperland tools
coprs/solopasha/hyprland
Rsich
Very informative, good to understand that chat GPT integrated,thanks
Darvond
I’m using DNF5 exclusively, so let’s see if I can manage.
Nope. Doesn’t appear COPR management exists in it yet. Oh well. I can earmark it for later.
Jakub Kadlčík
Hello Darvond,
don’t worry, you can enable Copr projects even without using DNF.
If you open any project in Copr, for example
, there is a table in the Overview page. Find the distribution that you use, and in the right column, there is a button for downloading the repository. You can download the .repo file into your
and DNF5 will then recognize it.
Also, there is DNF5 support for Copr already
https://dnf5.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dnf5_plugins/copr.8.html
but I think it isn’t released yet.
Darvond
Thanks for the pickup. And I’m certain that it’s waiting in the board, just that the plugins needed installed, taking a quick look. A bit of an oops on me, and a slight “we don’t need end users picking this up yet”. (Since DNF5 is currently in a half-finished state, but I love living on the edge.)
praiskup
The DNF5 copr plugin is shipped in
v5.0.11+ (already in F38). https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2023-c8fb79e192
Darvond
Yeah, I know. I got it. That was on me. Thank you regardless, that’ll be helpful to others.
hote
I found it quite meaningful and shared Car Games it with a few friends and thanks for all.
Roman
Wezterm looks promising, but the flatpak version does not start
Jakub Kadlčík
You can try to install it from Copr, it worked for me.
Roman
It’s all about Nvidia and Wayland
Abdu.Jabbar
For now, I am using Fedora in a virtual box and I’ll try these new projects there. Well done developers, I hope to get something.
Karlis K.
Thanks for the latest round of COPR project highlights! I thoroughly enjoy these every time they come up!
Jakub Kadlčík
Thank you for the kind words 🙂
Karlis K.
Note about Hyprland, altho it should work (I was able to test it a while back using my GTX1080) it’s a bit finnicky and may require additional tinkering. I came across hints in documentation and GitHub issues indicating nvidia requires additional fixes for Hyprland config, but in my case with RPMFusion nvidia drivers I didn’t need and for the most part it all worked out-of-the-box (some Arch comments on AUR hinted that nvidia patches have been merged in main branch and thus should be in all the stable releases).
Jakub Kadlčík
Thank you for the additional information, I am sure Nvidia users appreciate it. I only tested Hyperland in VirtualBox to make sure the Copr repository works as expected. On my workstation, I am looking forward to using Qtile on Wayland.