Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#81

Post by shevy-java » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

Has anyone tried it on Linux? It has been several months since I last tried it on Linux. I found some things worked but others did not. Has anyone more recent experiences here, say, within the last 6 months, on Linux specifically?

I am using my own custom "package" manager in ruby, but naturally it is nowhere near as sophisticated as homebrew. I am looking more towards complementing this, but these days I also lack time for more thorough testing, so I try to minimize pain points (and thus also less frequently use software written by others for the most part, unless it is a key project such as libreoffice and what not).

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#82

Post by jwr » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

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!

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#83

Post by frollogaston » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #13

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)

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.

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#84

Post by shevy-java » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

PufPufPuf wrote: post #41

vitorsr wrote: post #22

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

The concept of a "userspace package manager" is something I would expect Linux to have figured out twenty years ago. It's ridiculous that the usual situation for non-root users is "you can't install XY but feel free to build from source". Homebrew, Mise and Nix are filling that hole now. (Flatpak is more oriented towards GUI apps, and Snap... exists.)

PufPufPuf wrote:

> The concept of a "userspace package manager" is something I would expect Linux to have figured out twenty years ago.

Each one uses their own package manager right?

What I hate is that e. g. debian puts me to conform to their FHS. I want things installed into versioned AppDirs. GoboLinux allows that; NixOS to some extent too (though they used hashed directory names). Debian does not allow me to do that. I don't want to conform to what others wrote; I want software that adjusts to my wants.

> Flatpak is more oriented towards GUI apps

Have they not recently added a mandatory systemd dependency? I can't use software that things it must force software I don't need or use onto me.

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#85

Post by shevy-java » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

e12e wrote: post #60

PufPufPuf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of a "userspace package manager" is something I would expect Linux to have figured out twenty years ago. It's ridiculous that the usual situation for non-root users is "you can't install XY but feel free to build from source". Homebrew, Mise and Nix are filling that hole now. (Flatpak is more oriented towards GUI apps, and Snap... exists.)

Well, there was stow/xstow... https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://xstow.sourceforge.net/

Stow only symlinks. That's even one layer below GoboLinux, and GoboLinux is not extremely active either (it is not dead, but kind of semi-dormant, that is sometimes a few changes and improvements are added, then it goes back to hibernation again).

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#86

Post by bluebarbet » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

PufPufPuf wrote: post #41

vitorsr wrote: post #22

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

The concept of a "userspace package manager" is something I would expect Linux to have figured out twenty years ago. It's ridiculous that the usual situation for non-root users is "you can't install XY but feel free to build from source". Homebrew, Mise and Nix are filling that hole now. (Flatpak is more oriented towards GUI apps, and Snap... exists.)

In Debian-Ubuntu it's become a standard pattern to use `curl` or `wget` to add a third-party `deb` repo with keychain integration, because for whatever reason there's still no `apt` command for this obvious scenario. Really grinds my gears.

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#87

Post by e40 » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

Just want to thank you, Mike. I love Homebrew and wouldn't know what to do without it. My company sponsor's the project on github and I recommend that everyone consider helping out.

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#88

Post by maxloh » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

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 outdated packages.

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#89

Post by maxloh » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #24

Hi Mike, I’m @bfontaine on GitHub (I helped maintain Homebrew in ~2014-2016). I’m always impressed at your longevity as a maintainer; it’s been like what, 16+ years you’ve been maintaining Homebrew and you’re still here, still shipping new features! Thank you for everything!

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 outdated packages.

Re: Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0

#90

Post by mikepurvis » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

PufPufPuf wrote: post #41

vitorsr wrote: post #22

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

The concept of a "userspace package manager" is something I would expect Linux to have figured out twenty years ago. It's ridiculous that the usual situation for non-root users is "you can't install XY but feel free to build from source". Homebrew, Mise and Nix are filling that hole now. (Flatpak is more oriented towards GUI apps, and Snap... exists.)

One of the frustrating limits historically with some of these is that when you're already an unprivileged user it's been difficult or impossible to get to a sandboxed environment to perform hermetic or untrusted builds. So like with nix for example you could do a user install and then builds would build as your user, but if you installed as root, then builds would delegate out properly to nixbld users.

This has gotten better in recent years with user namespaces but it takes time for it to be adopted and achieve parity with what used to be just jumping to a user who can only write to a newly created dir in tmp.