How to Install PowerShell on Fedora Linux

PowerShell is both a command-line shell and fully-developed scripting language that is built on the .NET framework. Just like Bash, it is designed to carry out and automate system administration tasks.

Until recently, PowerShell was strictly a preserve for the Windows environment. That changed in August 2016 when it was made open-source and cross-platform with the introduction of PowerShell Core which is built on the .NET core.

PowerShell is now available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and ARM platforms such as Raspian. In this guide, we will walk you through the installation of Microsoft PowerShell on Fedora Linux.

For this guide, we will use Fedora 34. There are two simple ways that you can use to install PowerShell on Fedora and we shall cover them in turn.

Method 1: Installing PowerShell Using Microfost Repositories

This is a 4-step installation method that involves the following steps:

Add Microsoft RedHat Repository in Fedora

The first step is to add the Microsoft Signature Key by running the following command.

$ sudo rpm --import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc

Next, use the curl command to add the Microsoft RedHat repository.

$ curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/7/prod.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/microsoft.repo

Then update Fedora to sync with the newly added repository.

$ sudo dnf update

Install Powershell on Fedora

Finally, install PowerShell using the dnf package manager as follows:

$ sudo dnf install  powershell -y

To verify that PowerShell is installed, execute the command:

$ rpm -qi powershell

This provides detailed information such as the version, release installation date, architecture, etc of the newly installed Powershell package.

To access the Powershell prompt, simply run the following command:

$ pwsh

From here you can run Linux commands and perform scripting tasks on your newly installed PowerShell instance.

To exit Powershell, execute:

> exit

Method 2: Installing PowerShell from an RPM File

This is a more direct way of installing PowerShell and is not meaningfully different from the first method. PowerShell 7.2 has made available the universal packages for major Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, OpenSUSE, and Fedora. You can have a glance at these packages from the PowerShell GitHub repository.

When executed, the RPM file basically adds the GPG key and the Microsoft repository on your system and proceeds to install PowerShell.

So, run the following command to install PowerShell using the RPM file from the Github repository.

$ sudo dnf install https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/download/v7.2.1/powershell-lts-7.2.1-1.rh.x86_64.rpm

Uninstall PowerShell from Fedora Linux

If PowerShell is not your cup of tea, you can install it by running the command:

$ sudo dnf remove powershell

The UNIX shell is still the preferred environment by most Linux users. It’s clean, more effective, and well documented. Therefore, It’s no secret that most users would prefer working with bash than Powershell given the flexibility and ease of use it provides.

Nonetheless, PowerShell is still hugely popular and packed with multiple cmdlets for executing administrative tasks. In this guide, we have demonstrated how you can install PowerShell on Fedora.