I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1 • Hacker News Board

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#21

Post by Sytten » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:28 AM UTC

My homebrew story is always something along the lines of:

Me: Please install software A.

Homebrew: In order to install it I will also install 20 libraries (some need to be built from source), update openssl, update Python and wreck all virtual environments. Also since its been a while I decided it must be time to upgrade your other unrelated packages. Enjoy!

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#22

Post by wyager » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

Sytten wrote: post #21

My homebrew story is always something along the lines of: Me: Please install software A. Homebrew: In order to install it I will also install 20 libraries (some need to be built from source), update openssl, update Python and wreck all virtual environments. Also since its been a while I decided it must be time to upgrade your other unrelated packages. Enjoy!

I remember when homebrew first came out it was pretty snappy and didn't do a bunch of extraneous nonsense. A remarkably precipitous decline in software quality

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#23

Post by jmtulloss » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:31 AM UTC

tfpgh wrote: post #18

jmtulloss wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but they’re over indexing on that imo. The smooth comfort they’re looking for is costing them multiples of how much time it will actually save

A few days of work doesn't matter over years.

Yes it does

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#24

Post by Liquix » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

aerospace is nice, but also consider checking out yabai [0] + sketchybar [1] for an i3/hyprland style tiling setup. more customizable (IMO) and perfectly suited for a terminal based workflow :~^)

[0] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

[1] https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#25

Post by c-hendricks » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:40 AM UTC

w10-1 wrote: post #15

I wouldn't try to make macOS into Arch, if Arch is what works for you. Just run Arch in a VM on the mac, using Apple's virtualization framework [1]. (No need for other wrappers; the framework is often easier to use directly.) I find no significant performance issues; a lot of software actually runs faster in a Linux VM than when I compile and run it on the mac. The limitations are that the Linux VM's don't support sa…

I would love to use Arch in a VM on macOS, but Arch ARM is pretty bad. From the installation experience, the frequent stops in updates because something is compiling, to Chromium being broken for months.

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#26

Post by do_not_redeem » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:41 AM UTC

jmtulloss wrote: post #13

[deleted… my disagreements about time allocation aside, there’s no reason to argue on the internet about it]

> Linux is the most distracting

Spoken as someone who's never seen random gaming ads in their OS

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#27

Post by NERD_ALERT » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

Sytten wrote: post #21

My homebrew story is always something along the lines of: Me: Please install software A. Homebrew: In order to install it I will also install 20 libraries (some need to be built from source), update openssl, update Python and wreck all virtual environments. Also since its been a while I decided it must be time to upgrade your other unrelated packages. Enjoy!

You should use pyenv instead of relying on homebrew for your python version

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#28

Post by shakna » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

rob wrote: post #12

shakna wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been five years for my data point, but every single time it came time to update brew, I hit something else I'd never seen before. Every time, it broke. And from what I can see, migrations are still causing issues. [0] [0] https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/19951

Crazy, what kind of set up were you trying to do there? Been using it for probably 10 years and I can't remember the last time I had an issue and I run updates on it automatically every day. Biggest problem I remember is having to chown a directory again or something.

It usually hit, when a dependency of programs gets shoved out into cask. The moment where that happens, and where the things listing it as a dependency realise its now cask and not the main repo, is not altogether in sync.

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#29

Post by do_not_redeem » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:43 AM UTC

jmtulloss wrote: post #23

tfpgh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days of work doesn't matter over years.

Yes it does

Even if it takes you a full 2 days, that's literally 0.1% of your time over the 5-year life of a machine. Sharpen your axe before you go into the woods.

Re: I Used Arch, BTW: macOS, Day 1

#30

Post by c-hendricks » Sun, Jul 20, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

st3fan wrote: post #3

> Homebrew's filesystem permission handling is controversial, to say the least, and it has a tendency to fail at a package manager's main job: ensuring that new dependencies don't break the system. Homebrew user from day 1 it appeared. I have many many packages installed on multiple actively used systems and I have never had to deal with any kind of breakage. What is this myth? Yeah yeah I am just one data point ...

Yeah, homebrew works so well for me I also use it on Linux. In fact, its growing support for Linux/arm means I'm no longer stuck with Arch ARM VMs and can get up to date dev tooling in any Linux arm distro