{"slug": "homebrew", "name": "Homebrew", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "Open-source command-line package manager for macOS and Linux.", "recommenders": 34, "commenters": 72, "warners": 18, "score": 19.949, "rising": 0.82, "first": "2025-11-12", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "Commenters rely on it as the go-to package manager for macOS and increasingly use it on Linux and immutable distros, with Brewfiles for quick machine setup.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 34, "neutral": 20, "compare": 2, "warn": 20}, "spark": [0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 0, 21, 0, 2, 5, 2], "listed": true, "loved": ["Essential on Mac", "Linux support"], "caveat": "Old macOS dropped", "short_quote": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew )", "icon": true, "domain": "brew.sh", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://brew.sh", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Homebrew"], "verdict": [{"text": "Commenters rely on it as the go-to package manager for macOS", "cites": [{"id": 775933696, "item_id": 48495856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495856", "by": "gigatexal", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is the first thing I install on a new Mac. I love it.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is the first thing I install on a new Mac. I love it. Thank you everyone for all the work. Looking forward to 6.0 and all the security stuff yay. I hope the apps I use that their maintainers adopt the changes.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 778569072, "item_id": 48660567, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48660567", "by": "slipwalker", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew )", "excerpt": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew ): - raycast ( keyboard shortcuts for clipboard manager, basic window management, pomodoro tracking and app launch ) - stats - ice ( menubar manager ) - theBoringNotch ( to have some use for the annoying notch ) - mole ( storage cleaner ) - wezterm - textmate - iina - zen browser ( with uBlock origin and betterfox settings )", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 795748448, "item_id": 49734278, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734278", "by": "SmasherEpilepti", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew/nix: The most obvious one. MacOS just has no good package manager.", "excerpt": "Homebrew/nix: The most obvious one. MacOS just has no good package manager. It's even worse than Windows, which is also pretty bad, but at least on Windows you can install an app and manage it in a central \"Add and Remove Programs\" view, and they've standardized an installer format that cares about and manages versions and upgrades. Middle Click: This is a galling one. Rectangle: Far better than the MacOS's native sn", "context": "uses macOS at work, prefers KDE/Gnome", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 27 Golden Gate \u2013 Review"}, {"id": 740984320, "item_id": 46311520, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46311520", "by": "bhouston", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On desktop MacOS I use brew exclusively.", "excerpt": "Does anyone here really use the App Store? I open it like a few times a year. My apps installed on iOS almost never change. On desktop MacOS I use brew exclusively.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "installing apps on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple announces more ads are coming to App Store search results"}, {"id": 775913632, "item_id": 48494602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494602", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew became my go-to solution for installing software on my Macs", "excerpt": "Thanks for all the work you put into this over the years. Homebrew became my go-to solution for installing software on my Macs (after MacPorts) and I just realized that someone has been doing all that work for me for so long. Much appreciated!", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on Mac", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"text": " and increasingly use it on Linux and immutable distros, with Brewfiles for quick machine setup.", "cites": [{"id": 775914720, "item_id": 48494670, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494670", "by": "maxloh", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible. Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages. This makes cleaning up your workstation nearly impossible and a pain in the ass, since you can't tell what should be removed, or more importantly, what can be removed. Also, most native package managers update much slower than Homebrew, meaning you often only get outd", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "user-level packages on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775901200, "item_id": 48493825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493825", "by": "vitorsr", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions.", "excerpt": "Thanks for all the hard work. We are not many [1], but Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions. Note that certain operating systems such as Universal Blue's Bazzite (1.28%), Bluefin (0.49%) and Aurora (0.28%) default to bundling Homebrew [2]. [1] https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os-version/365d/ [2] https://github.com/ublue-os/brew", "context": "immutable Linux distro user", "use_case": "bootstrapping environment on immutable Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 762060384, "item_id": 47628774, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47628774", "by": "Daegalus", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew works the same on almost every distro, same pathings, same behavior, and even offers the Brewfiles to let me specify my setup.", "excerpt": "I use an immutable distribution, i dont use the package manager as it is antithesis to the concept. The current most popular immutable distros (Bluefin, Bazzite, Aurora, etc) use Bluefin for CLI tools, or even some apps that are tricky to get full functionality from Flatpaks but cant do system install. Sooo, i dont have a system package manager to use to add more packages, not without building my own image ontop of B", "context": "uses an immutable Linux distribution", "use_case": "CLI tools on immutable Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile"}, {"id": 743892864, "item_id": 46493304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493304", "by": "indigodaddy", "date": "2026-01-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew actually works very nicely for Linux and is a useful method to enable package management of cli tools/libraries at the user level.", "excerpt": "Brew actually works very nicely for Linux and is a useful method to enable package management of cli tools/libraries at the user level. It's also widely accepted as one of the tools of choice for package persistence on immutable distros (distrobox/toolbox is also another approach): https://docs.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-dx/ Also, for example I use it for package management for KASM workspaces: https://gist.github.com", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "package management on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS"}, {"id": 775946128, "item_id": 48496633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496633", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In the end I stuck with brew", "excerpt": "I was interested in Nix because it could automate setup and configuration of macOS features. But all it does is usually run defaults or some intermediatary. In the end I stuck with brew and wrote an idempotent setupmac() function in my bash_profile (I use bash 5) with the aid of chatgpt since it knows all the cool defaults commands, and it\u2019s pretty much solved setting up a new account or mac (alongside a Brewfile I m", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS setup with Brewfile", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 778396448, "item_id": 48649778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649778", "by": "bl4kers", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around", "excerpt": "Whatever you decide it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around", "context": "", "use_case": "reinstalling apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is its aggressive dropping of older macOS versions and Intel hardware,", "cites": [{"id": 794952817, "item_id": 49684551, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684551", "by": "ryandrake", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider \"too old.\"", "excerpt": "I switched from Homebrew to MacPorts a few years ago because of Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider \"too old.\" Even in the top-comment announcement here[1] they are making sure to include that they are removing support, as if they're proud of it! MacPorts generally doesn't care what version of macOS you run, so here I am. I'll probably never go back to Homebrew. MP is great! 1: https://news", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 775911953, "item_id": 48494497, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494497", "by": "ryandrake", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm not going to get on the hardware update treadmill just to keep using it.", "excerpt": "I've moved over to MacPorts due to Homebrew's aggressive support phase-out schedule[1]. My daily driver iMac is now in the Tier-3 \"go away\" bucket. Absolutely loved Homebrew for the short period of time I could use it, but I'm not going to get on the hardware update treadmill just to keep using it. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 800212705, "item_id": 50013294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013294", "by": "vor_", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Homebrew is rushing to drop support for Intel Macs", "excerpt": "Homebrew is rushing to drop support for Intel Macs despite the fact Intel Macs received a major version of macOS from Apple only 12 months ago. Check out MacPorts. It was the original popular package manager for macOS, and it supports Macs going all the way back to Leopard. It has a ton of packages, and the maintainers are very responsive to requests and bug reports in my experience.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew"}, {"id": 786248080, "item_id": 49140505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140505", "by": "the-mitr", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The issue is end of support for brew", "excerpt": "I have a macbook air from 2017. I use it when I travel, major work being done on a m4 mac mini. The issue is end of support for brew and many of the new/ latest apps not working but otherwise for simple things is works well", "context": "uses 2017 MacBook Air for travel", "use_case": "package management on old Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Anyone still do work on Intel Macs?"}, {"id": 776052592, "item_id": 48503287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503287", "by": "lanycrost", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "You need to rethink about this tierings", "excerpt": "You need to rethink about this tierings https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers many teams have old MacOS versions for build and other purposes and they face issues when they need to use packages for old versions. For example I use fully automated machine creation (packer, tart, vmware, etc.) and when we need to update let's say Monterey image it require to compile bunch of packages which is real headache.", "context": "runs automated machine image creation", "use_case": "packages on old macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"text": " followed by forced upgrades that can't be pinned and break things.", "cites": [{"id": 775897744, "item_id": 48493609, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493609", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I stopped using Homebrew after I got screwed too many times on mandatory upgrades that I couldn't pin.", "excerpt": "Personally I stopped using Homebrew after I got screwed too many times on mandatory upgrades that I couldn't pin. I use a combination of Mise and MacPorts now so I don't get any more surprise breakage and forced obsolescence. Plus Mise allows me to upgrade to any new version, whereas with Homebrew you have to wait for whenever the tap feels like upgrading (llama.cpp tap skips every 10 releases)", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775928400, "item_id": 48495525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495525", "by": "whinvik", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love using Homebrew but I wish there was more support for pinning.", "excerpt": "I love using Homebrew but I wish there was more support for pinning. I recently setup a new remote VM and tried to use a Brewfile for my setup. Turns out I cannot pin Neovim and so had to force upgrade my setup to 0.12. Forced upgrades are not nice.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 795032481, "item_id": 49689530, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689530", "by": "teh64", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I had more problems with brew, where some package needed to be updated that I did not want, and I caused a cascade of issues.", "excerpt": "I switched from brew to macports, and I have not experienced the first problem at all. In fact, I had more problems with brew, where some package needed to be updated that I did not want, and I caused a cascade of issues. The second has also never happened to me. macports installs the packages into a separate prefix, and you just add that to the path, so I wonder how it could bork irretrievably. Regarding instruction", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 776001729, "item_id": 48500108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500108", "by": "PufPufPuf", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "downgrading was a pain", "excerpt": "For system-wide things I usually use \"latest\" but it's nice being able to downgrade and/or stick to a working version using lockfiles. I remember back when I used Homebrew, Teleport shipped a bug that prevented me from accessing our servers and downgrading was a pain.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Essential on Mac", "summary": "Many call it the first or only must-have tool they install on a new Mac, filling the gap of no native package manager.", "quotes": [{"id": 775933696, "item_id": 48495856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495856", "by": "gigatexal", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is the first thing I install on a new Mac. I love it.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is the first thing I install on a new Mac. I love it. Thank you everyone for all the work. Looking forward to 6.0 and all the security stuff yay. I hope the apps I use that their maintainers adopt the changes.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 795748448, "item_id": 49734278, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734278", "by": "SmasherEpilepti", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew/nix: The most obvious one. MacOS just has no good package manager.", "excerpt": "Homebrew/nix: The most obvious one. MacOS just has no good package manager. It's even worse than Windows, which is also pretty bad, but at least on Windows you can install an app and manage it in a central \"Add and Remove Programs\" view, and they've standardized an installer format that cares about and manages versions and upgrades. Middle Click: This is a galling one. Rectangle: Far better than the MacOS's native sn", "context": "uses macOS at work, prefers KDE/Gnome", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 27 Golden Gate \u2013 Review"}, {"id": 778569072, "item_id": 48660567, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48660567", "by": "slipwalker", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew )", "excerpt": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew ): - raycast ( keyboard shortcuts for clipboard manager, basic window management, pomodoro tracking and app launch ) - stats - ice ( menubar manager ) - theBoringNotch ( to have some use for the annoying notch ) - mole ( storage cleaner ) - wezterm - textmate - iina - zen browser ( with uBlock origin and betterfox settings )", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}]}, {"label": "Linux support", "summary": "Linux users like it for user-level packages kept separate from the system, especially on immutable distros.", "quotes": [{"id": 775914720, "item_id": 48494670, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494670", "by": "maxloh", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible. Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages. This makes cleaning up your workstation nearly impossible and a pain in the ass, since you can't tell what should be removed, or more importantly, what can be removed. Also, most native package managers update much slower than Homebrew, meaning you often only get outd", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "user-level packages on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775901200, "item_id": 48493825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493825", "by": "vitorsr", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions.", "excerpt": "Thanks for all the hard work. We are not many [1], but Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions. Note that certain operating systems such as Universal Blue's Bazzite (1.28%), Bluefin (0.49%) and Aurora (0.28%) default to bundling Homebrew [2]. [1] https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os-version/365d/ [2] https://github.com/ublue-os/brew", "context": "immutable Linux distro user", "use_case": "bootstrapping environment on immutable Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 743892864, "item_id": 46493304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493304", "by": "indigodaddy", "date": "2026-01-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew actually works very nicely for Linux and is a useful method to enable package management of cli tools/libraries at the user level.", "excerpt": "Brew actually works very nicely for Linux and is a useful method to enable package management of cli tools/libraries at the user level. It's also widely accepted as one of the tools of choice for package persistence on immutable distros (distrobox/toolbox is also another approach): https://docs.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-dx/ Also, for example I use it for package management for KASM workspaces: https://gist.github.com", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "package management on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS"}]}, {"label": "Declarative setup", "summary": "Brewfiles let users record their packages and mass-install them on a new machine.", "quotes": [{"id": 778396448, "item_id": 48649778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649778", "by": "bl4kers", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around", "excerpt": "Whatever you decide it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around", "context": "", "use_case": "reinstalling apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 775946128, "item_id": 48496633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496633", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In the end I stuck with brew", "excerpt": "I was interested in Nix because it could automate setup and configuration of macOS features. But all it does is usually run defaults or some intermediatary. In the end I stuck with brew and wrote an idempotent setupmac() function in my bash_profile (I use bash 5) with the aid of chatgpt since it knows all the cool defaults commands, and it\u2019s pretty much solved setting up a new account or mac (alongside a Brewfile I m", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS setup with Brewfile", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 762060384, "item_id": 47628774, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47628774", "by": "Daegalus", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew works the same on almost every distro, same pathings, same behavior, and even offers the Brewfiles to let me specify my setup.", "excerpt": "I use an immutable distribution, i dont use the package manager as it is antithesis to the concept. The current most popular immutable distros (Bluefin, Bazzite, Aurora, etc) use Bluefin for CLI tools, or even some apps that are tricky to get full functionality from Flatpaks but cant do system install. Sooo, i dont have a system package manager to use to add more packages, not without building my own image ontop of B", "context": "uses an immutable Linux distribution", "use_case": "CLI tools on immutable Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile"}]}, {"label": "Beats alternatives", "summary": "Several switched back from MacPorts, Nix, or Mise, citing better package support, dependency handling, and UX.", "quotes": [{"id": 775910400, "item_id": 48494400, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494400", "by": "klodolph", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew has won me back.", "excerpt": "I recently switched back to Homebrew from Nix, and the three big factors in that switch are: - Brew seems to have better support for the packages it has, compared to Nix where it seems a percentage of packages are not as well maintained, - Better Mac support; some Nix packages have features disabled on macOS, I think just because the maintainers of this packages don\u2019t have a Mac for testing, - Better UX. Obviously I ", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "package manager on Mac", "switched_from": "Nix", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 794968016, "item_id": 49685501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685501", "by": "apothegm", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At the time, Homebrew was less finicky and better at resolving dependency conflicts.", "excerpt": "I switched from MP to Homebrew over a decade ago. At the time, Homebrew was less finicky and better at resolving dependency conflicts. It was a lot easier to get a system running MacPorts into a an irretrievably borked state. Not long after, Homebrew install instructions became ubiquitous, whereas with MacPorts it seemed like you always had to figure it out for yourself \u2014 if the package was even available, which it m", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 775921840, "item_id": 48495115, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495115", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I personally switched from Mise back to Brew.", "excerpt": "Glad you're having a good experience, but I personally switched from Mise back to Brew. I don't know if it was just my skill issue, but there were too many packages which found Mise to be problematic.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "Mise", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Fresh packages", "summary": "Formulas are said to update faster than MacPorts and most Linux distro repos.", "quotes": [{"id": 794979264, "item_id": 49686204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686204", "by": "ihuman", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I found homebrew updated formulas faster than macports did", "excerpt": "I switched from macports to homebrew a decade ago. I needed the lastest version of a program, and I found homebrew updated formulas faster than macports did", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 775914720, "item_id": 48494670, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494670", "by": "maxloh", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible. Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages. This makes cleaning up your workstation nearly impossible and a pain in the ass, since you can't tell what should be removed, or more importantly, what can be removed. Also, most native package managers update much slower than Homebrew, meaning you often only get outd", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "user-level packages on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775980912, "item_id": 48498807, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48498807", "by": "analog_daddy", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Almost everything else is installed using homebrew.", "excerpt": "Yes. I daily drive pop os now. Hate to use flatpak for anything. Only install core packages, google chrome and vscode using apt. Almost everything else is installed using homebrew. The idea is have a base stable system for UI and basic shell. Usually get the latest packages from brew. Earlier same base system but had distrobox with arch toolbox. Planning on using this scheme going forward, especially since while I lo", "context": "Pop!_OS daily driver", "use_case": "installing latest packages on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Faster upgrades", "summary": "A recent release made upgrades noticeably faster through concurrency.", "quotes": [{"id": 794982384, "item_id": 49686399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686399", "by": "spdustin", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Excellent update, very speedy on upgrades now.", "excerpt": "Excellent update, very speedy on upgrades now. Amazing what a little (safe) concurrency will do. Homebrew.app, however, has a show-stopper for me. \"Failed to decode Homebrew JSON output\" on the installed/upgrades panel. I'm guessing the Discover panel would normally indicate which Formulae/Casks are already installed, but because it couldn't parse the JSON output, that feature (if it exists) doesn't work. I'll file a", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Old macOS dropped", "summary": "Support tiers drop older macOS versions and Intel Macs quickly, pushing some users to MacPorts.", "quotes": [{"id": 794952817, "item_id": 49684551, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684551", "by": "ryandrake", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider \"too old.\"", "excerpt": "I switched from Homebrew to MacPorts a few years ago because of Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider \"too old.\" Even in the top-comment announcement here[1] they are making sure to include that they are removing support, as if they're proud of it! MacPorts generally doesn't care what version of macOS you run, so here I am. I'll probably never go back to Homebrew. MP is great! 1: https://news", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 775911953, "item_id": 48494497, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494497", "by": "ryandrake", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm not going to get on the hardware update treadmill just to keep using it.", "excerpt": "I've moved over to MacPorts due to Homebrew's aggressive support phase-out schedule[1]. My daily driver iMac is now in the Tier-3 \"go away\" bucket. Absolutely loved Homebrew for the short period of time I could use it, but I'm not going to get on the hardware update treadmill just to keep using it. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 776052592, "item_id": 48503287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503287", "by": "lanycrost", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "You need to rethink about this tierings", "excerpt": "You need to rethink about this tierings https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers many teams have old MacOS versions for build and other purposes and they face issues when they need to use packages for old versions. For example I use fully automated machine creation (packer, tart, vmware, etc.) and when we need to update let's say Monterey image it require to compile bunch of packages which is real headache.", "context": "runs automated machine image creation", "use_case": "packages on old macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Forced upgrades", "summary": "Limited pinning means unwanted upgrades and painful downgrades that can break setups.", "quotes": [{"id": 775897744, "item_id": 48493609, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493609", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I stopped using Homebrew after I got screwed too many times on mandatory upgrades that I couldn't pin.", "excerpt": "Personally I stopped using Homebrew after I got screwed too many times on mandatory upgrades that I couldn't pin. I use a combination of Mise and MacPorts now so I don't get any more surprise breakage and forced obsolescence. Plus Mise allows me to upgrade to any new version, whereas with Homebrew you have to wait for whenever the tap feels like upgrading (llama.cpp tap skips every 10 releases)", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775928400, "item_id": 48495525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495525", "by": "whinvik", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love using Homebrew but I wish there was more support for pinning.", "excerpt": "I love using Homebrew but I wish there was more support for pinning. I recently setup a new remote VM and tried to use a Brewfile for my setup. Turns out I cannot pin Neovim and so had to force upgrade my setup to 0.12. Forced upgrades are not nice.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 776001729, "item_id": 48500108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500108", "by": "PufPufPuf", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "downgrading was a pain", "excerpt": "For system-wide things I usually use \"latest\" but it's nice being able to downgrade and/or stick to a working version using lockfiles. I remember back when I used Homebrew, Teleport shipped a bug that prevented me from accessing our servers and downgrading was a pain.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Breakage risk", "summary": "Some found installs or updates could cascade into broken packages.", "quotes": [{"id": 795032481, "item_id": 49689530, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689530", "by": "teh64", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I had more problems with brew, where some package needed to be updated that I did not want, and I caused a cascade of issues.", "excerpt": "I switched from brew to macports, and I have not experienced the first problem at all. In fact, I had more problems with brew, where some package needed to be updated that I did not want, and I caused a cascade of issues. The second has also never happened to me. macports installs the packages into a separate prefix, and you just add that to the path, so I wonder how it could bork irretrievably. Regarding instruction", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 760181792, "item_id": 47511362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47511362", "by": "denkmoon", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Brew is a leaky piece of crap.", "excerpt": "Brew is a leaky piece of crap. nix 4 lyf. Seriously, I used to hate any time I needed to install something with brew not knowing if it was going to break everything else, since using nixpkgs for my macos dev requirements it's been so much nicer.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew"}, {"id": 775960977, "item_id": 48497561, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48497561", "by": "jeremyjh", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "several upgrades have broken stuff for me", "excerpt": "mise use -g ripgrep@latest I recently found mise and have become a fan as well. I have used asdf for about a decade and it supports the same .tool-versions projects so initially I used it those exact same things. But I use at four different computers for development regularly and sometimes use Codespaces as well. While syncing .dotfiles handles a lot of things, it doesn't handle dependencies of my dotfiles - my neovi", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Security model", "summary": "Some worry about trusting maintainer-supplied code and about past insecure design.", "quotes": [{"id": 792073952, "item_id": 49504622, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504622", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It is negligent that MacOS users, even those with prod access, all let any anon randos that sign up to be Homebrew maintainers execute any code they want on their computers with no accountability.", "excerpt": "I love wikipedia for research. It is great that anon randos can help keep a common encyclopedia maintained with high accountability. If a mistake happens it is quickly corrected. But that trust model does not work with software. It is negligent that MacOS users, even those with prod access, all let any anon randos that sign up to be Homebrew maintainers execute any code they want on their computers with no accountabi", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 751058113, "item_id": 46941132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46941132", "by": "AnonC", "date": "2026-02-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I think some of those design issues may have been fixed, but I\u2019m wary of Homebrew.", "excerpt": "I use MacPorts because of older versions of Homebrew having a weird and insecure design. [1] I think some of those design issues may have been fixed, but I\u2019m wary of Homebrew. [1]: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "More Mac malware from Google search"}]}, {"label": "Filesystem clutter", "summary": "Critics say it spreads files across /usr/local and PATH and had permission quirks.", "quotes": [{"id": 800048784, "item_id": 50003049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50003049", "by": "binaryturtle", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It may work for some, but it wasn't for me anymore (and I used Homebrew for many years before that.)", "excerpt": "Homebrew links everything by default (at least that's how it was), so you ended up with all kind of extra junk files all over the place you never needed that comes with some packages... all cluttering up things in the /usr/local main directories and the PATH. Homebrew additionally also had bunch of other directories, a huge git checkout, etc. then add the weird permission restrictions/ limitations on top of it\u2026 many ", "context": "long-time Homebrew user", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew"}, {"id": 795043457, "item_id": 49690216, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690216", "by": "vor_", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "compare", "quote": "It also always used /opt instead of taking over /usr/bin like Homebrew.", "excerpt": "Check out MacPorts. It was the original package manager, still going strong, and it supports Macs going all the way back to the Leopard era. It also always used /opt instead of taking over /usr/bin like Homebrew.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 775913792, "item_id": 48494612, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494612", "by": "frollogaston", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "then switched back after MacPorts inexplicably started wanting to install like 9000 packages", "excerpt": "I switched to MacPorts because of permission issues with brew, used it for years, then switched back after MacPorts inexplicably started wanting to install like 9000 packages just to install something small-ish like wget. Which is probably just as likely to happen with any other package manager but whatever.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}]}, {"label": "Maintainer attitude", "summary": "A few describe maintainers and design decisions as unfriendly to user needs.", "quotes": [{"id": 743460083, "item_id": 46466255, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466255", "by": "n8henrie", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "warn", "quote": "got tired of their very grumpy maintainers", "excerpt": "After a decade of homebrew, a few years ago I got tired of their very grumpy maintainers and switched to nix-darwin + home-manager. I've been overall fairly happy, and for tinkerers would recommend giving it a shot. Admittedly I bounced off my first try a year before that. A few of my favorite parts, which I see less represented in this thread so far: - I simultaneously jumped into nixos on several Linux machines (st", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin"}, {"id": 734525680, "item_id": 45907855, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907855", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Homebrew is famous for making life hard for users.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is famous for making life hard for users. It makes \"design decisions\" that often conflict with users' needs, all in order to live up to the personal preferences of the project leads. Personally I use asdf to manage my software on Macs. It too has also changed its design recently to become user-hostile (the command-line tool no longer prints the options for the commands, and it's full of bugs since a recent m", "context": "forced to use a Mac by work", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software"}]}], "who": [{"by": "chrisweekly", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50272609", "date": "2026-10-28"}, {"by": "SmasherEpilepti", "context": "uses macOS at work, prefers KDE/Gnome", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734278", "date": "2026-09-16"}, {"by": "mikae1", "context": "Fedora user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49683885", "date": "2026-09-13"}, {"by": "8xeh", "context": "runs Mac mini M1 as a home server", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439243", "date": "2026-08-25"}, {"by": "sandreas", "context": "Linux user who migrated from macOS", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49185027", "date": "2026-08-05"}, {"by": "didriksg", "context": "former Linux user now on Mac for work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49029485", "date": "2026-07-23"}, {"by": "analog_daddy", "context": "Pop!_OS daily driver", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48498807", "date": "2026-06-11"}, {"by": "satvikpendem", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494958", "date": "2026-06-11"}, {"by": "maxloh", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494670", "date": "2026-06-11"}, {"by": "e40", "context": "company sponsors the project", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494665", "date": "2026-06-11"}, {"by": "klodolph", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494400", "date": "2026-06-11"}, {"by": "vitorsr", "context": "immutable Linux distro user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493825", "date": "2026-06-11"}], "tags": ["for macOS users", "for Linux users", "for immutable distros", "declarative setup via Brewfile", "works alongside nix-darwin"], "use_cases": ["package management", "macos package management", "package manager", "package management on macos", "package manager on mac", "package management on mac"], "compared": [{"slug": "macports", "name": "MacPorts", "co": 16, "switched_from": 5, "switched_to": 8}, {"slug": "nix", "name": "Nix", "co": 15, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 5}, {"slug": "mise", "name": "mise", "co": 13, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "nix-darwin", "name": "nix-darwin", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "asdf", "name": "asdf", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "debian", "name": "Debian", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "home-manager", "name": "Home Manager", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "rectangle", "name": "Rectangle", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 794993952, "item_id": 49687122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49687122", "by": "mikemcquaid", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ultimately you don\u2019t need to know much Ruby to maintain or contribute to Homebrew.", "excerpt": "Ultimately you don\u2019t need to know much Ruby to maintain or contribute to Homebrew. Ruby makes it very easy to write custom DSLs that don\u2019t feel like Ruby. I didn\u2019t really know any before working on Homebrew and it\u2019s now my primary language. That said, yes we have already moved away from our DSL being Turing Complete. This release drops for official taps the ability for packages to run arbitrary postinstall/uninstall/", "context": "Homebrew maintainer", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794993056, "item_id": 49687066, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49687066", "by": "mikemcquaid", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew has never been better performant, secure, tested, linted and typed.", "excerpt": "We have a Landlock (formerly Bubblewrap) Linux sandbox due to an LLM. It sat unfixed on our roadmap for almost a decade. I and at least one other maintainer (as well as several LLMs) reviewed every line of code. Homebrew has never been better performant, secure, tested, linted and typed. I understand the LLM dubiousness (I used to share it myself) but we\u2019re the type of project where it\u2019s very easy to get agents to do", "context": "Homebrew maintainer", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 791600464, "item_id": 49475029, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49475029", "by": "mikemcquaid", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We do similar in Homebrew by autoclosing opens without the issue template", "excerpt": "We do similar in Homebrew by autoclosing opens without the issue template (which implies using the API which often now implies AI). The weird flip side is that the average good AI contribution is better than the average \u201cI used no AI\u201d contribution. Perhaps it\u2019s because Homebrew has so many declarative guardrails and is so easy for agents to test.", "context": "Homebrew maintainer", "use_case": "managing AI contributions", "switched_from": "", "story": "Please stop flooding our projects with AI slop to furnish your CV"}, {"id": 774924960, "item_id": 48432810, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432810", "by": "mikemcquaid", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Lots of people over the years could have forked Homebrew but no meaningful forks have taken off", "excerpt": "kelnos beat me to it but: because working on it is fun. I don't think most people in our industry will understand decade+ open source maintainers of large projects and that's fine. I don't understand how designers can do what they do either. I would say that those of us who stick around and don't burn out quickly tend to share my ideas of \"owe nothing\" and \"have fun\" much more than \"I must make sure I am always respo", "context": "long-time open source maintainer", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48490024", "title": "Homebrew 6.0.0", "mentions": 24}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49681545", "title": "Homebrew 7.0.0", "mentions": 12}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643848", "title": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50001580", "title": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907259", "title": "Homebrew no longer allows bypassing Gatekeeper for unsigned/unnotarized software", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49957116", "title": "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 6, "warn": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 2}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"warn": 6, "recommend": 21, "neutral": 4}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-08": {"warn": 2, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "compare": 2, "warn": 3, "recommend": 5}, "2026-10": {"warn": 4, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 3}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804361744, "item_id": 50272609, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50272609", "by": "chrisweekly", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use homebrew for my git and curl", "excerpt": "Right, so it's not just git, it's a bunch of system-provided utilities; macOS trusts bad certs, and these utils that trust the OS are affected. I use homebrew for my git and curl but haven't yet checked to confirm whether that matters here. Kind of outrageous that Apple's guidance is to edit the cert chain manually, and to expect that subsequent OS updates may revert your mitigation, reintroducing the vulnerability (", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "installing git and curl", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple's git still trusts the compromised eMudhra certificates"}, {"id": 803394993, "item_id": 50212187, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50212187", "by": "cachebag", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "zerobrew would literally NOT exist without homebrew", "excerpt": "Some spark-notes for those who can't be bothered to read the README or need more context - This project is not \"vibe-coded\", by some of your definitions. PRs using AI are met with more scrutiny than handwritten PRs - Accepting LLM generated submissions is not synonymous with developing zerobrew with little to no care. To me, it is non-conducive to reject a simple 50 line trivial bug fix, for example, because I have p", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 800514208, "item_id": 50032138, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032138", "by": "john_alan", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "whilst it still has home brew and a BSD core it\u2019s great", "excerpt": "Indeed. I just wonder if macOS will stop being UNIX like. That is, whilst it still has home brew and a BSD core it\u2019s great. If that goes away it\u2019s no longer a viable alternative to Linux.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple/macOS removed from official Unix registry"}, {"id": 800261233, "item_id": 50016327, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016327", "by": "chanux", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Brewfile too. Still prefer some stuff to be managed by brew.", "excerpt": "Directory specific tools (versioned if necessary) that are managed in declarative fashion is great. I use Brewfile too. Still prefer some stuff to be managed by brew. For example the browsers, App Store apps (managed via mas[1]) [1] https://github.com/mas-cli/mas", "context": "", "use_case": "managing browsers and apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew"}, {"id": 800212705, "item_id": 50013294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013294", "by": "vor_", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Homebrew is rushing to drop support for Intel Macs", "excerpt": "Homebrew is rushing to drop support for Intel Macs despite the fact Intel Macs received a major version of macOS from Apple only 12 months ago. Check out MacPorts. It was the original popular package manager for macOS, and it supports Macs going all the way back to Leopard. It has a ton of packages, and the maintainers are very responsive to requests and bug reports in my experience.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew"}, {"id": 800048784, "item_id": 50003049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50003049", "by": "binaryturtle", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It may work for some, but it wasn't for me anymore (and I used Homebrew for many years before that.)", "excerpt": "Homebrew links everything by default (at least that's how it was), so you ended up with all kind of extra junk files all over the place you never needed that comes with some packages... all cluttering up things in the /usr/local main directories and the PATH. Homebrew additionally also had bunch of other directories, a huge git checkout, etc. then add the weird permission restrictions/ limitations on top of it\u2026 many ", "context": "long-time Homebrew user", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew"}, {"id": 800045296, "item_id": 50002831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002831", "by": "reader9274", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I don't use homebrew for speed. I use it for trust", "excerpt": "I don't use homebrew for speed. I use it for trust", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zerobrew: A faster alternative to Homebrew"}, {"id": 799423282, "item_id": 49963955, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49963955", "by": "mrweasel", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "NO! Brew sucks.", "excerpt": "For weeks I used Safari to access some homelab stuff that only have IPs because Firefox wouldn't work. I must have been through all possible settings in Firefox, nothing worked. Turns out macOS decided that Firefox didn't need access to the local network. I guess I was asked at some point and said \"No\" because Firefox shouldn't roam around on my network unsupervised, not in my wildest imagination would I have guessed", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"}, {"id": 799338340, "item_id": 49958646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958646", "by": "ozgrakkurt", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "brew is terrible in terms of performance", "excerpt": "Recently switched to KDE on a linux laptop (600 USD lenovo) and stopped using my macbook (m1 16\" pro). Speakers, touchpad and battery life are inferior. Speakers are OK after installing EasyEffects and I don't use the touchpad while programming. And battery life is close enough Cachyos with KDE is 10x better than MacOS. So it doesn't make sense to use macbooks for programming anymore IMO. You can't even see the updat", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"}, {"id": 795748448, "item_id": 49734278, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734278", "by": "SmasherEpilepti", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew/nix: The most obvious one. MacOS just has no good package manager.", "excerpt": "Homebrew/nix: The most obvious one. MacOS just has no good package manager. It's even worse than Windows, which is also pretty bad, but at least on Windows you can install an app and manage it in a central \"Add and Remove Programs\" view, and they've standardized an installer format that cares about and manages versions and upgrades. Middle Click: This is a galling one. Rectangle: Far better than the MacOS's native sn", "context": "uses macOS at work, prefers KDE/Gnome", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "macOS 27 Golden Gate \u2013 Review"}, {"id": 795393360, "item_id": 49712085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49712085", "by": "rvz", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "They needed compatibility hacks + Rosetta and even required re-compiling the software for Homebrew to work correctly", "excerpt": "> I would seriously bet that <1% of Mac owners have ever run (Docker|Android Studio|Ableton). It's a great move if the M1 is your first Mac and just use their machine to surf the web, write documents and emails. It makes even more sense for existing Mac and power users to just wait. > and fwiw I used Homebrew just fine off the bat That is not true. They needed compatibility hacks + Rosetta and even required re-compil", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on M1", "switched_from": "", "story": "iPhone Duo"}, {"id": 795257360, "item_id": 49703585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49703585", "by": "jcastro", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It works great there's no reason to use distro specific tooling when you can use what everyone else is using.", "excerpt": "I use `lima` and `llvm` every day with brew. It works great there's no reason to use distro specific tooling when you can use what everyone else is using.", "context": "", "use_case": "installing toolchains", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 795059041, "item_id": 49691190, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49691190", "by": "ladberg", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Homebrew just fine off the bat", "excerpt": "I would seriously bet that <1% of Mac owners have ever run (Docker|Android Studio|Ableton), and fwiw I used Homebrew just fine off the bat \"for full stable support without Rosetta\" is moving the goalposts because Rosetta made >99% of all workloads \"just work\" in a completely transparent way", "context": "", "use_case": "package management on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "iPhone Duo"}, {"id": 795043457, "item_id": 49690216, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690216", "by": "vor_", "date": "2026-09-14", "stance": "compare", "quote": "It also always used /opt instead of taking over /usr/bin like Homebrew.", "excerpt": "Check out MacPorts. It was the original package manager, still going strong, and it supports Macs going all the way back to the Leopard era. It also always used /opt instead of taking over /usr/bin like Homebrew.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 795033584, "item_id": 49689599, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689599", "by": "kccqzy", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I reluctantly switched from MacPorts to Homebrew around 2014.", "excerpt": "I reluctantly switched from MacPorts to Homebrew around 2014. At that time Homebrew had that yuck factor by recommending it be installed into /usr/local rather than /opt. But still, I switched because there were more formulae in HB than ports in MP. And it turns out that the Homebrew install location is customizable anyways.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 795032481, "item_id": 49689530, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689530", "by": "teh64", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I had more problems with brew, where some package needed to be updated that I did not want, and I caused a cascade of issues.", "excerpt": "I switched from brew to macports, and I have not experienced the first problem at all. In fact, I had more problems with brew, where some package needed to be updated that I did not want, and I caused a cascade of issues. The second has also never happened to me. macports installs the packages into a separate prefix, and you just add that to the path, so I wonder how it could bork irretrievably. Regarding instruction", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794982384, "item_id": 49686399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686399", "by": "spdustin", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Excellent update, very speedy on upgrades now.", "excerpt": "Excellent update, very speedy on upgrades now. Amazing what a little (safe) concurrency will do. Homebrew.app, however, has a show-stopper for me. \"Failed to decode Homebrew JSON output\" on the installed/upgrades panel. I'm guessing the Discover panel would normally indicate which Formulae/Casks are already installed, but because it couldn't parse the JSON output, that feature (if it exists) doesn't work. I'll file a", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794979264, "item_id": 49686204, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686204", "by": "ihuman", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I found homebrew updated formulas faster than macports did", "excerpt": "I switched from macports to homebrew a decade ago. I needed the lastest version of a program, and I found homebrew updated formulas faster than macports did", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794968016, "item_id": 49685501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49685501", "by": "apothegm", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At the time, Homebrew was less finicky and better at resolving dependency conflicts.", "excerpt": "I switched from MP to Homebrew over a decade ago. At the time, Homebrew was less finicky and better at resolving dependency conflicts. It was a lot easier to get a system running MacPorts into a an irretrievably borked state. Not long after, Homebrew install instructions became ubiquitous, whereas with MacPorts it seemed like you always had to figure it out for yourself \u2014 if the package was even available, which it m", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794952817, "item_id": 49684551, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684551", "by": "ryandrake", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider \"too old.\"", "excerpt": "I switched from Homebrew to MacPorts a few years ago because of Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider \"too old.\" Even in the top-comment announcement here[1] they are making sure to include that they are removing support, as if they're proud of it! MacPorts generally doesn't care what version of macOS you run, so here I am. I'll probably never go back to Homebrew. MP is great! 1: https://news", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794951328, "item_id": 49684458, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684458", "by": "jjice", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Brew is notably slow compared to the other package managers I use, but never in an unbearable way.", "excerpt": "Always a joy to see security and performance as a big highlight on a release. Brew is notably slow compared to the other package managers I use, but never in an unbearable way. I've always used it on my Mac work machines, but always used my native package managers on Linux. What are the reasons to run homebrew on Linux? Better newer package support when you're on something slower moving like a Debian distro? I've sta", "context": "", "use_case": "package management on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 794942161, "item_id": 49683885, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49683885", "by": "mikae1", "date": "2026-09-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use \"dnf\" to upgrade my system and \"flatpak update\" and \"brew upgrade\" to upgrade the apps I've installed.", "excerpt": "> I don't understand the distinction you use here. Distinction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49683258 I use \"dnf\" to upgrade my system and \"flatpak update\" and \"brew upgrade\" to upgrade the apps I've installed. An app like VirtualBox does not install using Flatpak or Homebrew, so I would use dnf for that. It's usually an app or two that doesn't work via Flatpak/Homebrew/AppImage that I need to install using d", "context": "Fedora user", "use_case": "installing user apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 7.0.0"}, {"id": 792073952, "item_id": 49504622, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49504622", "by": "lrvick", "date": "2026-08-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It is negligent that MacOS users, even those with prod access, all let any anon randos that sign up to be Homebrew maintainers execute any code they want on their computers with no accountability.", "excerpt": "I love wikipedia for research. It is great that anon randos can help keep a common encyclopedia maintained with high accountability. If a mistake happens it is quickly corrected. But that trust model does not work with software. It is negligent that MacOS users, even those with prod access, all let any anon randos that sign up to be Homebrew maintainers execute any code they want on their computers with no accountabi", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root"}, {"id": 791027888, "item_id": 49439243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439243", "by": "8xeh", "date": "2026-08-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew or macports has a similar software inventory to debian.", "excerpt": "My Mac mini m1 is a fantastic home server. Years ago I realized running a 100W PC all the time was REALLY expensive, so I switched to an old linux laptop at 30W (about $4/month). That helped, but I moved to the m1 mac specifically for the power efficiency. It does all the things my linux server did, and it does them at 6W (75\u00a2/month). I've found no competitor with similar performance that can run in such a low power ", "context": "runs Mac mini M1 as a home server", "use_case": "package management on Mac home server", "switched_from": "", "story": "New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra"}, {"id": 788086497, "item_id": 49255406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49255406", "by": "theshrike79", "date": "2026-08-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Python through brew is the one I expect to be the latest one I use for one-off scripts.", "excerpt": "I use mise for dev tooling, that way I can have the exact correct version for every project. Python through brew is the one I expect to be the latest one I use for one-off scripts.", "context": "", "use_case": "latest Python for scripts", "switched_from": "", "story": "Docker Sandboxes \u2013 Disposable, isolated sandboxes for AI agents"}, {"id": 786960434, "item_id": 49185027, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49185027", "by": "sandreas", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "brew is just awesome", "excerpt": "Here are some things that existed for a long time but still blow my mind (note: this is not \"modern macOS\", I migrated to Linux long time ago, so forgive me ignoring modern flaws). - The preview app - document editing at its best - Apple Mail Search - you can filter by nearly every aspect, even between dates - the mighty Alt key (alt+click unlocks an extra feature all the time, alt + shift + volume makes smaller step", "context": "Linux user who migrated from macOS", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"Gravity is worth asking about.\""}, {"id": 786248080, "item_id": 49140505, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140505", "by": "the-mitr", "date": "2026-08-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "The issue is end of support for brew", "excerpt": "I have a macbook air from 2017. I use it when I travel, major work being done on a m4 mac mini. The issue is end of support for brew and many of the new/ latest apps not working but otherwise for simple things is works well", "context": "uses 2017 MacBook Air for travel", "use_case": "package management on old Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Anyone still do work on Intel Macs?"}, {"id": 784471762, "item_id": 49029485, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49029485", "by": "didriksg", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Brew is nice and all, but it's nothing compared to pacman/apt.", "excerpt": "I'm actually in the opposite position. I've used Linux for 10 years until I recently had to switch to Mac due to work. I started off in Ubuntu in 2016 and moved to Arch in 2018. I ran it until I started in a new job. One thing that Linux just gets right compared to macos and windows is the package managers. Brew is nice and all, but it's nothing compared to pacman/apt. I also miss it for the window managers. Coming f", "context": "former Linux user now on Mac for work", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Linux distro do you daily drive?"}, {"id": 782577505, "item_id": 48911094, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911094", "by": "nikodunk", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Install it through brew", "excerpt": "I use Bazzite for development bc it works like a Mac with sane defaults and a just works approach: - IDEs are no problem. Editors will \"just work\" for anything you type into the app store - Bazzite handles the special cases for you and installs them through brew taps or Flatpaks. - For development it's basically just like a Mac where you also can't install system-level packages: Node, Python etc work through brew / n", "context": "", "use_case": "installing compilers and packages", "switched_from": "", "story": "Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK"}, {"id": 778569072, "item_id": 48660567, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48660567", "by": "slipwalker", "date": "2026-06-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew )", "excerpt": "homebrew ( indispensable ! all the other apps below are installed/managed via homebrew ): - raycast ( keyboard shortcuts for clipboard manager, basic window management, pomodoro tracking and app launch ) - stats - ice ( menubar manager ) - theBoringNotch ( to have some use for the annoying notch ) - mole ( storage cleaner ) - wezterm - textmate - iina - zen browser ( with uBlock origin and betterfox settings )", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 778426528, "item_id": 48651658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48651658", "by": "speedgoose", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew to get a package manager that is not managed by Apple", "excerpt": "Homebrew to get a package manager that is not managed by Apple and its many restrictions and high fees. AltTab and Rectangle to have more features to manage windows. Ghostty can replace Terminal.app though I think it leaks memory. Zen Browser is Firefox with an Arc inspired interface. It's slow and heavy but it blocks ads and trackers a bit better than Chromium based browsers, or Safari.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 778407504, "item_id": 48650469, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650469", "by": "kdtsh", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew and mise-en-place are the only must have apps for me", "excerpt": "Homebrew and mise-en-place are the only must have apps for me (both of which are not .app applications). Everything else is pretty well context-dependant and/or built in. For me, the better-than-you-think built in apps are: - Reminders - I haven\u2019t gone all in on any other task management software, but I don\u2019t bother because Reminders does everything I need - Mail - it is fiddly and idiot proof to a fault, but provide", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 778396448, "item_id": 48649778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649778", "by": "bl4kers", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around", "excerpt": "Whatever you decide it's useful to find things on Homebrew and record in a file. Then you can mass install next time around", "context": "", "use_case": "reinstalling apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 778366051, "item_id": 48647878, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48647878", "by": "imagetic", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew - https://brew.sh", "excerpt": "Firefox Nightly - https://www.firefox.com/en-US/channel/desktop uBlock Origin - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin Ghostty - ghostty.org Homebrew - https://brew.sh Oh-my-posh - https://github.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh Zed - https://zed.dev 1Password - https://1password.com Tailscale - https://tailscale.com iStats Menu - https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus Little Snitch - https://obdev.at/p", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 778308003, "item_id": 48644250, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48644250", "by": "CobaltFire", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew (https://brew.sh/)", "excerpt": "Heres my list: Transnomino (https://www.transnomino.com/) StillColor (https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor) SublimeText (https://www.sublimetext.com/) Homebrew (https://brew.sh/) VLC (https://www.videolan.org/) Macs Fan Control (https://crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control) Rectangle (https://rectangleapp.com/) NetBird (https://netbird.io/) Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) Honestly its not huge and most are probably obvious", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 777750514, "item_id": 48609407, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48609407", "by": "einsteinx2", "date": "2026-06-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Homebrew pretty extensively as a package manager on macOS", "excerpt": "That\u2019s a perspective on the AUR that I hadn\u2019t really seen before from Arch advocates, in my (admittedly hazy memory) it\u2019s usually mentioned in the sense of \u201cArch is great because you always get the latest packages in the official repos and basically anything you possibly need you can just install from the AUR\u201d. If you\u2019re actually using it just as a reference guide essentially then it seems like there\u2019s some value the", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks"}, {"id": 777447106, "item_id": 48590444, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48590444", "by": "solatic", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the most I can get most workplaces to standardize on is Homebrew for package management", "excerpt": "I ran NixOS for a while, before I switched to Apple Silicon, so I consider myself fairly well-versed-enough (although nowhere near an expert) in Nix and the Nix ecosystem. My last four jobs have all issued me MacBook Pros; the last three with Apple Silicon. Ultimately, my workplace setup is what has the most gravity. And the most I can get most workplaces to standardize on is Homebrew for package management of off-th", "context": "", "use_case": "package management on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi"}, {"id": 776052592, "item_id": 48503287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503287", "by": "lanycrost", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "You need to rethink about this tierings", "excerpt": "You need to rethink about this tierings https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers many teams have old MacOS versions for build and other purposes and they face issues when they need to use packages for old versions. For example I use fully automated machine creation (packer, tart, vmware, etc.) and when we need to update let's say Monterey image it require to compile bunch of packages which is real headache.", "context": "runs automated machine image creation", "use_case": "packages on old macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 776030272, "item_id": 48501892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48501892", "by": "sgt", "date": "2026-06-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can't say how much I appreciate Homebrew, been using iti for years", "excerpt": "Well done, a milestone. I can't say how much I appreciate Homebrew, been using iti for years, at least 15 years.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 776001729, "item_id": 48500108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500108", "by": "PufPufPuf", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "downgrading was a pain", "excerpt": "For system-wide things I usually use \"latest\" but it's nice being able to downgrade and/or stick to a working version using lockfiles. I remember back when I used Homebrew, Teleport shipped a bug that prevented me from accessing our servers and downgrading was a pain.", "context": "", "use_case": "package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775946128, "item_id": 48496633, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496633", "by": "commandersaki", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "In the end I stuck with brew", "excerpt": "I was interested in Nix because it could automate setup and configuration of macOS features. But all it does is usually run defaults or some intermediatary. In the end I stuck with brew and wrote an idempotent setupmac() function in my bash_profile (I use bash 5) with the aid of chatgpt since it knows all the cool defaults commands, and it\u2019s pretty much solved setting up a new account or mac (alongside a Brewfile I m", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS setup with Brewfile", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775933696, "item_id": 48495856, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495856", "by": "gigatexal", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is the first thing I install on a new Mac. I love it.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is the first thing I install on a new Mac. I love it. Thank you everyone for all the work. Looking forward to 6.0 and all the security stuff yay. I hope the apps I use that their maintainers adopt the changes.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775928400, "item_id": 48495525, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495525", "by": "whinvik", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love using Homebrew but I wish there was more support for pinning.", "excerpt": "I love using Homebrew but I wish there was more support for pinning. I recently setup a new remote VM and tried to use a Brewfile for my setup. Turns out I cannot pin Neovim and so had to force upgrade my setup to 0.12. Forced upgrades are not nice.", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775914720, "item_id": 48494670, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494670", "by": "maxloh", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible.", "excerpt": "Homebrew is so good that I use it on Linux whenever possible. Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages. This makes cleaning up your workstation nearly impossible and a pain in the ass, since you can't tell what should be removed, or more importantly, what can be removed. Also, most native package managers update much slower than Homebrew, meaning you often only get outd", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "user-level packages on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775913632, "item_id": 48494602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494602", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew became my go-to solution for installing software on my Macs", "excerpt": "Thanks for all the work you put into this over the years. Homebrew became my go-to solution for installing software on my Macs (after MacPorts) and I just realized that someone has been doing all that work for me for so long. Much appreciated!", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager on Mac", "switched_from": "MacPorts", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775911953, "item_id": 48494497, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48494497", "by": "ryandrake", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm not going to get on the hardware update treadmill just to keep using it.", "excerpt": "I've moved over to MacPorts due to Homebrew's aggressive support phase-out schedule[1]. My daily driver iMac is now in the Tier-3 \"go away\" bucket. Absolutely loved Homebrew for the short period of time I could use it, but I'm not going to get on the hardware update treadmill just to keep using it. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers", "context": "", "use_case": "macOS package management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775901200, "item_id": 48493825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493825", "by": "vitorsr", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions.", "excerpt": "Thanks for all the hard work. We are not many [1], but Homebrew has been a great way to quickly bootstrap an environment in immutable Linux distributions. Note that certain operating systems such as Universal Blue's Bazzite (1.28%), Bluefin (0.49%) and Aurora (0.28%) default to bundling Homebrew [2]. [1] https://formulae.brew.sh/analytics/os-version/365d/ [2] https://github.com/ublue-os/brew", "context": "immutable Linux distro user", "use_case": "bootstrapping environment on immutable Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 775897744, "item_id": 48493609, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48493609", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2026-06-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I stopped using Homebrew after I got screwed too many times on mandatory upgrades that I couldn't pin.", "excerpt": "Personally I stopped using Homebrew after I got screwed too many times on mandatory upgrades that I couldn't pin. I use a combination of Mise and MacPorts now so I don't get any more surprise breakage and forced obsolescence. Plus Mise allows me to upgrade to any new version, whereas with Homebrew you have to wait for whenever the tap feels like upgrading (llama.cpp tap skips every 10 releases)", "context": "", "use_case": "package manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Homebrew 6.0.0"}, {"id": 762060384, "item_id": 47628774, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47628774", "by": "Daegalus", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew works the same on almost every distro, same pathings, same behavior, and even offers the Brewfiles to let me specify my setup.", "excerpt": "I use an immutable distribution, i dont use the package manager as it is antithesis to the concept. The current most popular immutable distros (Bluefin, Bazzite, Aurora, etc) use Bluefin for CLI tools, or even some apps that are tricky to get full functionality from Flatpaks but cant do system install. Sooo, i dont have a system package manager to use to add more packages, not without building my own image ontop of B", "context": "uses an immutable Linux distribution", "use_case": "CLI tools on immutable Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile"}, {"id": 743892864, "item_id": 46493304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493304", "by": "indigodaddy", "date": "2026-01-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Brew actually works very nicely for Linux and is a useful method to enable package management of cli tools/libraries at the user level.", "excerpt": "Brew actually works very nicely for Linux and is a useful method to enable package management of cli tools/libraries at the user level. It's also widely accepted as one of the tools of choice for package persistence on immutable distros (distrobox/toolbox is also another approach): https://docs.projectbluefin.io/bluefin-dx/ Also, for example I use it for package management for KASM workspaces: https://gist.github.com", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "package management on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS"}, {"id": 740984320, "item_id": 46311520, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46311520", "by": "bhouston", "date": "2025-12-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On desktop MacOS I use brew exclusively.", "excerpt": "Does anyone here really use the App Store? I open it like a few times a year. My apps installed on iOS almost never change. On desktop MacOS I use brew exclusively.", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "installing apps on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple announces more ads are coming to App Store search results"}]}