I think homebrew and MacPorts are niche though. Your "normal" OSX user wouldn't install them. Heck, I ran Linux for years and years and I haven't even installed them under OSX because if I wanted to run BSD or Linux, I'd have installed BSD or Linux.

It's like installing all those GNU tools on Windows to make it more like Linux, and putting Homebrew etc. on OSX to make it more like Linux. Why not just use Linux or BSD? I never understand it.

Also, the lack of proper Quartz windowing support from X11 apps makes using them painful.