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maxloh 4 hours ago

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Also, most native package managers update much slower than Homebrew, meaning you often only get outdated packages.

iamcreasy 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages.

What is the use case when someone would want to differentiate system/user installed package? Isn't it good things that they are the same - meaning once something is install that is present regardless of how it got here.

Washuu 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Most Linux package managers cannot separate user-installed packages from system packages.

And because of pinning versions to LTS releases on certain Linux distributions many times those packages stay out of date for years. Which is quite annoying.

xenophonf 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> quite annoying

It's also quite stable, which you'd think more people would prize given the recent and on-going supply chain attacks.

thewebguyd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Stable as in unchanging, sure.

Stable can also mean "you get to keep all the bugs present in this version for the next 4+ years"

jandrese 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Or worse, the kernel moves beyond the package in the repo so a year and a half later it doesn't even work anymore.

VirtualBox is really bad about this.

happyopossum 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Given the recent dramatic uptick in vulnerability discoveries, it's also prone to being quite insecure...

xmprt 3 hours ago | parent [-]

LTS still typically get security updates. That's what the support in long term support means.

moskimus 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This gets thrown around a lot, but it's not entirely true. Depending on the particular distro, only certain core packages are likely to get updates on LTS releases. Non-core packages may just get left to rot until the next LTS release. Specifically Ubuntu follows this. A lot of their non-core packages just get imported from Debian and then just sit unmaintained until next release (this goes doubly if not using Ubuntu Pro).

thewebguyd an hour ago | parent [-]

Especially frightening when you look at how much everyday stuff is actually in the Universe repo in Ubuntu. Without Ubuntu Pro, your LTS system can sit in a very insecure state for a long time as patching Universe is "best effort" from the community.

Most popular GUI stuff is from universe, as are quite a few dev tools. Some examples: Gimp, Inkscape, pip (and a ton of python packages), most of gnome, a big chunk of KDE, htop, mariadb, etc.

See for yourself grep -h "^Package:" /var/lib/apt/lists/_universe__Packages | awk '{print $2}' | sort -u

Or to see only what you have installed from Universe: comm -12 <(dpkg-query -f '${Package}\n' -W | sort) <(grep -h "^Package:" /var/lib/apt/lists/_universe__Packages | awk '{print $2}' | sort -u)

A big repo isn't always better.

dom96 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Huh, didn't know you can use Homebrew on Linux

pram 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yep homebrew on an LTS distro is pro.

vondur 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Homebrew is the default on Bluefin Linux since most of the system is immutable. I like it since I’m so used to it on my Mac.

colordrops 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Brew is probably serving your needs, but you might also want to look into Nix/NixOS, which takes what you are talking about to the next level.