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- you have way more packages on any Linux package manager.

And Homebrew tends to be more up to date then most distribution repositories. Especially if I want to have a stable OS.

Linux package managers do not mess with /usr/local as expected in a UNIX compatible OS. Homebrew does.

You can install Homebrew in another directory, it works fine.

Linux package managers are an integral part of the OS environment and update process

Which is bad. Application updates are typically tied to base system package updates. Either you use some stable branch (like Debian) stable and you are stuck with old software. Or you use some rolling release, but then your kernel, X11, Gtk+, or whatever could break.

Decoupling the installation of applications from the base operating system is a good thing.

- Aptitude, for example, gets rid of older versions of packages, while Homebrew keeps all previous versions and simply changes the symlink.

    brew cleanup

...and old versions are removed and downloads are cleared. Also, you can add the --cleanup flag to upgrade and it will remove old versions. I prefer Homebrew's approach here, because it's easier to rollback.

While compiling from source is nothing wrong, it can take a lot of time depending on what you are building.

Luckily, Homebrew bottles most software that has long compile times. I have a MacBook with a Core M processor and install times have never been a problem (and I have installed Boost, Rust, and ghc, to name just a few larger things).

> Decoupling the installation of applications from the base operating system is a good thing.

How is that a good thing if an application needs some core OS features that are not available in its current state? Newer libraries become available for all software and benefit from the upgrades. And yeah, sometimes some things break, but it's easy enough to roll back to a previous library version if you need to, instead of bloating the system with multiple versions of different libraries.

> You can install Homebrew in another directory, it works fine.

But it's not its default. How many users change its directory ?

> And Homebrew tends to be more up to date then most distribution repositories. Especially if I want to have a stable OS.

Honestly you can't compete with AUR (Arch) on that level.

I went from Windows to using Ubuntu for years then to Mac only a few years ago. I really disliked the packaged management as well. Homebrew and seeing individual apps give me "an update is available!" pop-ups felt like such a step backwards.

However...what specifically are you wanting to install and update on Mac that a better package manager would significantly help with? I find on Mac I'm rarely installing or updating new packages so it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. As long as I can easily install and update Python, Node, Vagrant, Chrome and a few other things I'm happy.

I'd love a laptop that had a long life battery, good screen, good build, was light, ran an open source OS that supported all the software I need etc. but you have to compromise unfortunately and I can compromise on package management.

Most of these things are considered features of homebrew, not bugs.

Not being a part of the OS is a major issue, though.

Nonsense. Absolute rubbish.

Being broken is a feature? Changing /usr/local instead of being sane? Leaving old versions of packages lying about instead of cleaning them up? Breaking when the Apple devs wonder if it would be fun to switch things up a bit under the hood without telling anyone?

The one thing I can think of that's a "feature" is that brew compiles locally, instead of pulling down a binary, but even that has some draw backs.

I'm all for product loyalty, but a spade's a spade.

I'm not understanding what is "insane" about installing to /usr/local/Cellar and dropping a symlink in /usr/local/bin. This is the convention on OS X. All tools I have ever seen install to /usr/local.

What exactly is wrong with writing to /usr/local? It seems to fall in line with the FHS standard, at least as far as I can tell.

Sometimes older versions of different packages may be dependencies of newer packages. This is a thing that happens with software. When it's not a problem, `brew cleanup` gets rid of old versions.

Most of the time brew does install binaries, they're called Bottles. When it can't find a binary, it compiles locally. Yes this is sometimes annoying but it's not a deal breaker, at least not for me.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Breaking when the Apple devs wonder if it would be fun to switch things up a bit under the hood without telling anyone." This has never happened to me or anyone I know and furthermore Brew is a Unix compliant tool and OS X is a SUS compliant operating system.

Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, it just sounds a little like you're a Linux user who doesn't or possibly hasn't ever used OS X. Brew is not a panacea but it's honestly pretty good. There's also MacPorts if you're used to more old-style tools and a couple other package managers as well. You can even use Nix on OS X.

> Changing /usr/local instead of being sane?

Better than most OS X programs, which seem to have paths like /Applications/Something.app/Contents/Resources/SomethingElse.app/Contents/Developer/Frameworks/Resources/Something.dylib/Contents/Resources/MacOS/Resources/Frameworks/Something.dylib/Contents/Developer

Case in point, an excerpt from the program Lipo's usage text:

fatal error: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/lipo: Usage: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/lipo [input_file]