EPEL stands for Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux, and it is created and maintained by the Fedora Special Interest Group.
The EPEL repository is an additional package repository that provides easy access to install packages for commonly used software that are not available in the official repositories of Enterprise Linux distributions, such as RHEL, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, etc.
EPEL packages are usually based on their Fedora counterparts and will never conflict with or replace packages in the base Enterprise Linux distributions. EPEL uses much of the same infrastructure as Fedora, including build system, Bugzilla instance, updates manager, mirror manager and more.
To use the EPEL repository, you need to install the epel-release package that contains the repository configuration files and public package signing keys. You can download this package from the EPEL website or install it using your package manager, such as yum or dnf, depending on your operating system and version. You may also need to enable some additional repositories that are not enabled by default, such as CodeReady, Linux Builder or PowerTools, depending on the packages you want to install from EPEL.
The EPEL repository is a useful source of software for Enterprise Linux users who want to have more choices and flexibility than what’s in the official repositories. However, you should also be aware that EPEL packages are not supported by Red Hat or other Enterprise Linux vendors, and they may have some bugs or issues that are not present in the official packages. You should also check the compatibility and dependencies of the EPEL packages before installing them on your system.