Is there a command I can run in the terminal that is similar to apt-get update in debian/ubuntu
su -c 'yum update'
you can also include version upgrade by doing
su -c 'yum upgrade'
Very simple to use and fast is also yumex, which is one of the greatest GUI package managers out there. It has an automatic and very comprehensive update management feature, that let's you enable rawhide for particular packages, like for instance you want to run Fedora 19 but you want some features from rawhide, like the kernel 3.11 for instance for more power from an AMD 7000 series GPU, you can simply do that.
The standard package manager is not so great, except for installing yumex maybe lol.