I just don't get this complaint. Run brew install <package>, add a folder to PATH. Done. Anything somewhat popular (vim/git/python/ruby/graphviz, imagemagick...

I just don't get this complaint. Run brew install <package>, add a folder to PATH. Done. Anything somewhat popular (vim/git/python/ruby/graphviz, imagemagick...) is usually updated after a day and I don't remember the last time it gave me any trouble. The comparison with Windows simply doesn't work. Unix software compiles on OS X out-of-the-box. It doesn't on Windows. The conventions (pathnames, line endings, CLIs, time zones) are either the same or compatible, on Windows they're not.