Sincere thanks. I'll check your links for sure.

I tried doing what you advised, but did it poorly. Right now I have 2 
drives, one with KDE + repos, one with Gnome. From the Gnome drive 
accessing the repository at /dev/sdb2 /opt/repo didn't work. Opening the 
second drive from a file manager gave me a "media" mounted address by ID 
(I think?), so I'm guessing I'll have to edit /etc/fstab to automount 
the drive at boot (or something??). Trial and error. I have some RedHat 
Fedora books, the best I found was using a different http address, not a 
separate hard drive address. Definitely interested in your links, thanks.

I tried different GUI tools in KDE and Gnome. Again your links will help.

Reinstalling the Gnome was worth doing. It actually is smooth and simple 
with practice. Gnome is pretty primitive, however, and wastes time and 
high resolution video with disappearing menus, giant icons, and a nearly 
invisible giant pointer. It does look like an iPad GUI.

I unplug the wired network cable during install. They actually assume 
the user accepts tracking by WiFi, so that gets turned off, even though 
I have no WiFi. Very different kind of "workstation" computers these 
days. Network history "forever," too. At least I asked it for privacy, 
who knows if it really complied.

Andrew Dahl wrote:
> Regarding Fedora repos, Fedora (and eventually RHEL) moved to dnf.  It's
> just the next generation of yum, basically.
>
> Adding repos is as easy as:  dnf config-manager --add-repo
> https://atlassian.artifactoryonline.com/atlassian/hipchat-yum-client/hipchat4.repo
>
>
> Repos still get added to /etc/yum.repos.d/  (because that makes sense -- I
> expect that'll change eventually)
>
> A good resource is the Fedora Sys Admin Guide, which should be on the CD
> somewhere.  Online, you can find the chapter on dnf here:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/23/html/System_Administrators_Guide/ch-DNF.html
>
> Otherwise if you're looking for a GUI for dnf that's a bit more user
> friendly, I think PackageKit is what's being used right now.
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:46 AM, Jeremy MountainJohnson <
> jeremy.mountainjohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Can't speak for Fedora specifically, but on RHEL you add repos to txt
>> configs under /etc/yum.repos.d The files are ini style [setting] ...
>> key=value
>>
>> Yes, unfortunately it can be that clumsy, I've used CentOS and Fedora
>> in the past, they drive me nuts with package management (as well as
>> the bloat).
>>
>> --
>> Jeremy MountainJohnson
>> Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 5:51 AM, Rick Engebretson <eng at pinenet.com> wrote:
>>> I got a very nice 10 disk set of Fedora 26 from OSDisc.com recently. It
>>> consisted of 1 Gnome and 1 KDE Live install each, and 8 repository
>> disks. I
>>> had gotten similar sets of opensuse 12.2 and 11.3 years ago, so I had
>> some
>>> experience with the tricky repository install. Opensuse online
>> repositories
>>> can be tricky, too, so a permanent stable repository on disk is nice.
>>>
>>> My question is, can Fedora really be so clumsy?? Is Gnome really so
>>> non-intuitive, and are they too smart to need a fine tuned cursor arrow??
>>> KDE is reasonably familiar with opensuse but I can't figure out how to
>>> install packages from the Fedora repository. I have an ancient RedHat9
>> set I
>>> could figure out, but not Fedora. The opensuse Yast interface is great to
>>> help a user get past configuration and into development familiarity, but
>> I
>>> would like to think I can be competent in alternative distros.
>>>
>>> The best I can figure is the KDE tool "Discover" is supposed to
>> construct a
>>> repository RPM database, but I don't see where it can be reconfigured to
>>> local disk storage.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
>>> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
>>> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>> _______________________________________________
>> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
>> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
>> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list