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Cool idea, but supporting homebrew is a big yikes! I hope no serious developers on linux ever use homebrew, it's the worst package manager by far. Most packag

by fouc 1y ago

Cool idea, but supporting homebrew is a big yikes! I hope no serious developers on linux ever use homebrew, it's the worst package manager by far. Most package managers support versioning and keeping old versions of installs around, but not homebrew. That's why I'm boycotting it at this point, got burnt by it too many times. I'd rather use pacman or apt-get or pkgsrc or nix or any other package manager than homebrew.

rufugee 1y ago
I share your concerns about homebrew. It was one of the reasons I gave up on Silverblue/Bluefin.
jcastro 1y ago
Bluefin contributor here, why are you using homebrew that way? For development use a container.
- crowcroft 1y ago
  A lot of people don't use containers/don't want to use containers. I guess Bluefin might just not be for them though.
  - mtndew4brkfst 1y ago
    This is my impression - if you explicitly don't want to use toolbox or devcontainers I don't think you're on Bluefin's happy path at all, and the maintainers don't seem concerned enough by that to improve other experiences.
  - jcastro 1y ago
    Right, Bluefin is for container development.
- lemonberry 1y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but how else or what else would you use Homebrew?
- lawlessone 1y ago
  Just since you are here, is it any good for Game dev with things like godot?
  - jcastro 1y ago
    No but Bazzite DX is almost done so we can start working on Bazzite GDX soon, which is going to be our game dev image. Though hopefully as more things become flatpak native ideally someday the idea of specialized images won't be so necessary.
- fouc 1y ago
  so Bluefin is using homebrew within containers only? why bother using homebrew at all then?
seemaze 1y ago
while I use Homebrew on macOS for the errant command line utility or library, I share your concern. I use the Universal Blue Silverblue variant for it's integrated Nvidia support with either mise-en-place[0], or the native toolbx[1] utility for isolated environments. [0]https://mise.jdx.dev https://mise.jdx.dev [1]https://containertoolbx.org https://containertoolbx.org
andrewmutz 1y ago
I use bluefin linux full time and don't use homebrew. I do all development in containers, so I can use whatever I want inside them.
tristan957 1y ago
I don't use Homebrew because it installs to /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew. It makes absolutely no sense to use a whole new user, and then use non-standard directories. If you change where Homebrew installs, then you are on your own because they don't support changing the install path.
mikestorrent 1y ago
Is there a simple summary of why homebrew is so problematic?
mtillman 1y ago
I agree with you. DHH is a big ruby guy so my expectation was he’d use brew.
- fouc 1y ago
  he uses mise these days at least for project specific stuff
akvadrako 1y ago
Homebrew is used by millions of devs, generally because the advantages are worth it. You can't use pacman, apt or pkgsrc on image based distros. And nix is a big headache. Of course anything that can easily run in a container is better, but I use brew for the stuff that doesn't and have few problems.
LinXitoW 1y ago
Personally, I would love to not use homebrew, but I'm practically forced to. The package management story in Linux is horrible, far worse than the general fans lead me to believe. Most tools I need are missing or ancient, even in the Fedora repos. That's one of the reasons so many modern tools will give you a shell script to pipe to bash for installation. It's the only way to make things installable in a simple, uniform way. While homebrew isn't perfect, it's still a lot better than manually compiling every new version of a tool until the distros repo gets the update, or following custom install instructions for every tool (and then manually managing updates). But I'm new to having Linux as a daily dev driver (only servers before), so if I'm missing an obvious fix to get 99% of tools in their up-to-date version installed and managed on Fedora (or ideally, anywhere), please let me know.

by fouc 1y ago

rufugee 1y ago

I share your concerns about homebrew. It was one of the reasons I gave up on Silverblue/Bluefin.

jcastro 1y ago

Bluefin contributor here, why are you using homebrew that way? For development use a container.

crowcroft 1y ago
A lot of people don't use containers/don't want to use containers. I guess Bluefin might just not be for them though.
- mtndew4brkfst 1y ago
  This is my impression - if you explicitly don't want to use toolbox or devcontainers I don't think you're on Bluefin's happy path at all, and the maintainers don't seem concerned enough by that to improve other experiences.
- jcastro 1y ago
  Right, Bluefin is for container development.
lemonberry 1y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but how else or what else would you use Homebrew?
lawlessone 1y ago
Just since you are here, is it any good for Game dev with things like godot?
- jcastro 1y ago
  No but Bazzite DX is almost done so we can start working on Bazzite GDX soon, which is going to be our game dev image. Though hopefully as more things become flatpak native ideally someday the idea of specialized images won't be so necessary.
fouc 1y ago
so Bluefin is using homebrew within containers only? why bother using homebrew at all then?

seemaze 1y ago

while I use Homebrew on macOS for the errant command line utility or library, I share your concern. I use the Universal Blue Silverblue variant for it's integrated Nvidia support with either mise-en-place[0], or the native toolbx[1] utility for isolated environments. [0]https://mise.jdx.dev https://mise.jdx.dev [1]https://containertoolbx.org https://containertoolbx.org

andrewmutz 1y ago

I use bluefin linux full time and don't use homebrew. I do all development in containers, so I can use whatever I want inside them.

tristan957 1y ago

I don't use Homebrew because it installs to /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew. It makes absolutely no sense to use a whole new user, and then use non-standard directories. If you change where Homebrew installs, then you are on your own because they don't support changing the install path.

mikestorrent 1y ago

Is there a simple summary of why homebrew is so problematic?

mtillman 1y ago

I agree with you. DHH is a big ruby guy so my expectation was he’d use brew.

fouc 1y ago
he uses mise these days at least for project specific stuff

akvadrako 1y ago

Homebrew is used by millions of devs, generally because the advantages are worth it. You can't use pacman, apt or pkgsrc on image based distros. And nix is a big headache. Of course anything that can easily run in a container is better, but I use brew for the stuff that doesn't and have few problems.

LinXitoW 1y ago

Personally, I would love to not use homebrew, but I'm practically forced to. The package management story in Linux is horrible, far worse than the general fans lead me to believe. Most tools I need are missing or ancient, even in the Fedora repos. That's one of the reasons so many modern tools will give you a shell script to pipe to bash for installation. It's the only way to make things installable in a simple, uniform way. While homebrew isn't perfect, it's still a lot better than manually compiling every new version of a tool until the distros repo gets the update, or following custom install instructions for every tool (and then manually managing updates). But I'm new to having Linux as a daily dev driver (only servers before), so if I'm missing an obvious fix to get 99% of tools in their up-to-date version installed and managed on Fedora (or ideally, anywhere), please let me know.