> Generally everything you're saying about Linux package management vs Homebrew is the opposite of my experience. A coworker uses Linux for his machine and apt's packages always seem out of date or he has problems installing things, whereas Homebrew always just works.
A TALE OF TWO HOMEBREWS: the collection of build recipes (a.k.a the repos)
The second piece of Homebrew, which deserves to be compared to _distinct_ counterparts in the Linux world, is the ecosystem of homebrew-core, the taps provided by the community, and so on. In these respects, Homebrew is more comparable to a distribution's repositories than its package management tooling. Some Linux distributions are based on very up-to-date upstream sources, much like Homebrew. Nixpkgs, which is a collection of packages for the Nix package manager (usable on NixOS, GNU+Linux distros, and macOS) tends to have the same versions of packages as homebrew-core does— it's very up to date. But many Linux distros and users prefer to use older versions of software (which still receive security updates!) so that other users can suffer all the usual pains of early adoption, and work out some of the kinks for them. Some users just don't like dealing with frequent updates. Ubuntu is often used this way, with users recommending and installing the ‘long term service’ releases, which receive infrequent feature updates, but regular security updates. One unfortunate consequence of this strategy for gaining stability is that it can significantly complicate installing the latest releases of software, and that's what I suspect your friend has run up against.
Here, Homebrew is very similar to the repositories of many Linux distributions (like Arch, Gentoo, or perhaps even Debian Sid), and very dissimilar to others (CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Linux Mint, Ubuntu LTS releases), and I don't feel that there's a fact of the matter about which way of doing things is ‘better’. I will say, however, that Homebrew has a thriving, active, and friendly developer community who are constantly adding new packages, updating existing ones, and working to improve the quality of the packages in their repositories. Homebrew contributors and users should take pride in that.
> Generally everything you're saying about Linux package management vs Homebrew is the opposite of my experience. A coworker uses Linux for his machine and apt's packages always seem out of date or he has problems installing things, whereas Homebrew always just works.
A TALE OF TWO HOMEBREWS: the collection of build recipes (a.k.a the repos)
The second piece of Homebrew, which deserves to be compared to _distinct_ counterparts in the Linux world, is the ecosystem of homebrew-core, the taps provided by the community, and so on. In these respects, Homebrew is more comparable to a distribution's repositories than its package management tooling. Some Linux distributions are based on very up-to-date upstream sources, much like Homebrew. Nixpkgs, which is a collection of packages for the Nix package manager (usable on NixOS, GNU+Linux distros, and macOS) tends to have the same versions of packages as homebrew-core does— it's very up to date. But many Linux distros and users prefer to use older versions of software (which still receive security updates!) so that other users can suffer all the usual pains of early adoption, and work out some of the kinks for them. Some users just don't like dealing with frequent updates. Ubuntu is often used this way, with users recommending and installing the ‘long term service’ releases, which receive infrequent feature updates, but regular security updates. One unfortunate consequence of this strategy for gaining stability is that it can significantly complicate installing the latest releases of software, and that's what I suspect your friend has run up against.
Here, Homebrew is very similar to the repositories of many Linux distributions (like Arch, Gentoo, or perhaps even Debian Sid), and very dissimilar to others (CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Linux Mint, Ubuntu LTS releases), and I don't feel that there's a fact of the matter about which way of doing things is ‘better’. I will say, however, that Homebrew has a thriving, active, and friendly developer community who are constantly adding new packages, updating existing ones, and working to improve the quality of the packages in their repositories. Homebrew contributors and users should take pride in that.