www.not404.com

EPEL is like the "Fedora Extras" repository, but intended for use with RedHat Enterprise and CentOS.  Thus, by adding the EPEL repository to your production server, you have access to a LOT MORE pre-built (and tested) software packages that you don't need to worry about building all by yourself.  In my opinion, it's a huge time-saver, and reduces the risk of anyone on my team from injecting a compile-time configuration mistake.

All hail the Pre-Packaged Repository and the Automated Software Updates notifier -- without these, I'd be encumbered with managing updates several dozen tarballs of the essentials, instead of focusing on the interesting software problems that I'm being paid to work on! 

The EPEL Announcement Email

Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:36:51 -0700
From: Karsten Wade
Subject: Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) Now Open
To: fedora-announce-list@redhat.com
Message-ID: <1185521811.17380.972.camel@erato.phig.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

If you use enterprise-class Linux (EL) distributions derived from
Fedora, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS, we have something
very exciting for you.

Ever find yourself rebuilding one of the high-quality Fedora packages
for your EL version because it didn't ship with the EL distro?

Friends, there is a new way.  May we introduce ...

              Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL)

EPEL is a community of package maintainers working from inside of
Fedora.  Many are the same people who maintain the Fedora version.  Yet,
there room for new packages and contributors.  Currently, around 1000
packages are available, and we've been growing at the rate of several
dozen packages every week.

 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

How to use EPEL:

 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#howtouse

You can look for packages here:

 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#WhereIsTheSoftwareRepositoryLocated

Looking for a package not in EPEL or other questions?

 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ