CliffFeb 22

MacOS question for someone who is still relatively new to MacOS.

I own an M4 Mac Mini and am curious about Brew/HomeBrew. I see a lot of mention about it and that there's so many apps available through it that aren't necessarily available in other places.

Is it worth it to install it and use it? Is it easy to install? I assume it has to be installed via command line, which likely isn't an issue for me since I did use Linux for several years back in 2002 - 2010 or so.

Suggestions or thoughts from those that use it? I'm not a power user and certainly not a developer.

#MacOS #Mac #Brew #HomeBrew #Software

Show threadtw000Feb 22

@cliffwade Think of it as a package manager for MacOS and use accordingly. It's on every one of my Macs, even the old / unsupported ones where it opts to compile many things very slowly.

To extend my point, for Windows, winget is the equivalent (package manager).

Show threadCliffFeb 22
@tw000 Gotcha. Is it easy to install? I assume I just need to install it somehow from within Terminal on my MacOS and then go from there?
Show threadtw000Feb 22

@cliffwade It's just a sketchy-looking curl statement to pull down and run a shell script.

https://brew.sh/

Probably worth a read through the first time.

Homebrew

The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux).

Homebrew
Show threadCliffFeb 22

@tw000 Been reading that for a few minutes already actually.

I see there there is a .pkg installer as well. Is it recommended or not recommended to use that and to install from command line, or will it really matter?

Show threadtw000
@cliffwade I forget the exact nuance where the pkg makes sense, but it's there in the docs. I use the installer script on my systems. I am the only user on all my Macs.
Feb 22 at 3:32pmWeb
Show threadCliffFeb 22
@tw000 I'm the only user on my Macs as well. I'm really thinking I should go with the command line install. I've actually not installed or done anything at all via the command line since switching to MacOS nearly a year ago.