They're guidelines. In the case of OS X laptops, they're almost uniformly used as single-user machines. This just takes the hassle of having to sudo to do it.

They're guidelines. In the case of OS X laptops, they're almost uniformly used as single-user machines. This just takes the hassle of having to sudo to do it. There are a few other reasons they specifically opted for /usr/local instead of other paths here: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/installation https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/installation