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Farewell, Homebrew. It's been a good run. - 2019 Intel iMac user.
by aydgn 19d ago
Farewell, Homebrew. It's been a good run.
- 2019 Intel iMac user.
- mikemcquaid 19d agoSorry we couldn’t support this for longer :( From the release notes: > The Intel support decision reflects the limits of a volunteer-run project: Apple have dropped Intel x86_64 support from macOS 27 Golden Gate and GitHub Actions will retire Intel macOS runners in autumn 2027. If Apple and Microsoft’s GitHub, two of the world’s largest technology companies, cannot continue supporting macOS Intel x86_64, sadly neither can Homebrew. MacPorts still supports macOS Intel x86_64 and is likely to provide better results on this platform.
- eu 19d agovery disappointed about this
- xtracto 19d agoI think they would be able to support older architectures under a paid contract if absolutely needed, for the right price. Other than that, I'm grateful for the free software.
- jezek2 19d agoHow come that MacPorts supports macOS versions all the way back to 10.5 Leopard in the latest version?
- sethaurus 19d agoThat's an excellent question for the maintainers of the MacPorts project! It can supplement the very clear and polite answer you've already received from a maintainer of Homebrew.
- vor_ 18d agoThe polite Homebrew project that used to market themselves with "MacPorts driving you to drink?" on their website.
- kps 19d agoDifferent philosophy of dependency management.
- isityettime 19d agoBreadth of support and retention of historical support are also priorities that differ between other software distributions, especially free operating systems. See Debian vs. Ubuntu, or NetBSD vs. DragonflyBSD. Some software distributions emphasize package freshness and coverage, like Homebrew does, which multiplies the support burden involved for each architecture or platform supported. Others have a more prominent focus on backwards compatibility or exotic architectures, but have a smaller or slower-moving package set.
- frumplestlatz 18d agoThey've never actively disallowed it, and volunteers have been happy to maintain it.
- donatj 19d agoMy personal opinion, but I'd rather see wider macOS support than Linux support, if it's a sheer matter of where time is allocated. Linux already has world class package managers.
- mikemcquaid 19d agoLinux Homebrew users would disagree. Supporting macOS Intel has been significantly harder, slower and more expensive for us the last few years than adding ARM Linux support. If it was easy and free we’d have kept it for longer (until Apple and GitHub killed theirs at least which is coming in less than a year).
- Grombobulous 19d agoHomebrew is incredibly useful for immutable Linux distributions. That said, after trying Bazzite I now prefer CachyOS and Arch as a whole. I can see the appeal of using Homebrew and Flatpak to keep OS updates a little more separate from app updates, although I don't really see a specific need for it for myself.
- michaelsbradley 19d agoThank you for all of your hard work, I’ve been very happily using Homebrew on OS X / macOS since 2010. No need to be sorry, the situation is understandable.
- mwpmaybe 19d agoSo much of GNU et al is already in Homebrew that I wonder how close you are to being able to support Intel Macs using the Linux/amd64 branch (or backend or whatever you call it) of Homebrew or something close to it, possibly after installing a few base libraries and utilities from MacPorts. ETA: I've got Homebrew 7 building packages from source on an Intel Mac running Monterey; nothing yet required from MacPorts and a pretty minimal patch to the installer. I'd probably want to add legacy-support from MacPorts and update the macOS build environment to add it as an extra library on Intel Macs if I were to continue. That being said, I'm sure y'all talked about continuing to support Intel Macs as source-based and ultimately decided against it, so it's unlikely that this will be interesting to the team. But let me know if I'm wrong and I'll open a couple PRs for further discussion.
- eviks 19d ago> GitHub Actions will retire Intel macOS runners in autumn 2027 But why drop before that?
- kps 19d agoMacPorts is still there for us.
- michaelsbradley 19d agoSame boat: 2018 Intel Mac mini, stuck on macOS 10.15. When I eventually upgrade my hardware, I’ll happily use Homebrew again. In the meantime, MacPorts!
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- ryandrake 19d agoWe've all gone through it :-( Happy users of the (really good) software until our hardware gets "too old" and the inevitable rug pull.
- dghkk 19d agoYou have no idea what rug pull means, do you?
- isityettime 19d agoThat hardly happens on desktop/laptop Linux. Seems like a proprietary OS problem tbh.
- ryandrake 18d agoYou're definitely right about that. I'll admit it. If you're not the kind of person who likes to throw all your electronics out every few years to spend $thousands on new ones then the Apple ecosystem is not for you.
- isityettime 18d agoIt's a weird situation in that the standards for mobile devices like cell phones and tablets are on the floor compared to those for PCs, so Apple's same 6-year cutoff feels respectable for smartphones but miserly for laptops.
- toomuchtodo 19d agoUncompensated volunteers dropping support for a 7 year old device that is shortly going to be unsupported by the manufacturer isn't a rug pull. Entitlement can be wild, volunteers are volunteers. Consumers of volunteer output are free to support their use cases themselves on their own time. Find an ARM Mac used (like an M1) and upgrade.
- tonyedgecombe 19d ago> Find an ARM Mac used (like an M1) and upgrade. And throw away perfectly good hardware.
- Grombobulous 19d agoI'm probably the millionth person to parrot this to you but my goodness you are a hero if you can tolerate the Intel Mac experience in 2026. I thought my Intel Mac from that era was incredibly weird. Little firmware-ish things were so glitchy and sluggish. At some point the wake from sleep/lid open just took forever in ways that didn't happen on older Intel Mac models (or maybe I was going crazy). I just had this strange feeling that Apple was knowingly half-hearting their Intel drivers and products as a whole as they were putting more energy into developing Apple Silicon. Dude, you owe it to yourself to just grab a used M2 MacBook Air or something along those lines. Treat yourself. You'll be kicking yourself for not doing so sooner. (Don't get a MacBook Neo, too many compromises including poor battery life, a used Air is much better, and if you use more than one external monitor use caution on what model/CPU you choose). Sure, a laptop should last longer than 7 years, but this is one of those "Apple yeets out a new architecture" exceptions like the PowerPC to Intel transition. Better to accept it and move on. 7 years is still a solid run. You've only got ~2 more years left until you start losing security updates anyway. The other machine I highly recommend is Linux/Framework 13 Pro with the Intel Core Ultra Series 3, although that's a whole different price class, and obviously not everyone can make that move in terms of software compatibility.
- eu 19d agoIf the old Intel Mac still works, what should one do? Dump it into a landfill?
- mixmastamyk 19d agoElectronics recycling exists, plus a few dollars for the aluminum case.
- Grombobulous 19d agoI sell all my previous devices on second hand markets like eBay. That question becomes "not my problem:" whoever else is buying it has some kind of use case even though I am done with the system and it no longer fits my use case anymore. I think that, for the parent commenter to my original comment, this Intel Mac no longer fits their use case. They can fight it and suffer or get the right tool for the job. I'm sure the person who buys it from them won't care that the current version of Homebrew doesn't work on it. Intel Macs run Linux very well, I might add. It should also be noted that, yes, most electronics eventually get scrapped for parts and raw materials. It doesn't really take all that long for important components to fail to a point where a computer is not really worth dealing with anymore. Yes, they can be repaired in many cases, but that's only generally worth it to a small group of vintage enthusiasts (and I say this as someone who very much enjoys vintage computing myself).
- mediumsmart 19d ago> Farewell, Homebrew. It's been a good run. - 2019 Intel iMac user. welcome. - 2015 intel macbook user
- vor_ 18d agoCheck out MacPorts. They have installers going all the way back to Leopard.
- rmnclmnt 18d agoAny modern Linux distro works great on Intel Macs. Been daily driving with Debian 13 initially and now NixOS on my MBP2015, have not used the MacOS Sequoia partition for months!