I recommend MacPorts, the migration is easy, you copy the package names you installed with brew, uninstall homebrew (there's an unisntall script on brew.sh FAQ section, it will also uninstall all homebrew packages (but not the casks)) then install macports and reinstall the packages with sudo port. Although the selection is smaller on macports and newer packages might not have a prebuilt pkg for your OS so you still might end up building manually (My poor i5 4core had to attempt building nodejs26 because there wasn't a pkg for Ventura)

Actually, Homebrew 7 is supported on your Mac, you just have to install Linux to use it. :)

If you want to continue using the same MacBook that will be only path forward when Apple decides to EOL it (if it hasn't already happened).

I'm a long time Homebrew on Linux user, it works really well. I always prefer it over the distro supplied package manager for user facing CLI apps.

Apple was selling Intel Mac Pros in 2023, it's absurd these things are coming up on EOL already.

Check out MacPorts. It was the original package manager, still going strong, and it supports Macs going all the way back to the Leopard era. It also always used /opt instead of taking over /usr/bin like Homebrew.

How long do you expect them to support Intel processors though? It’s been like 6 years since the last MacBook release had any Intel processor, and Apple doesn’t make OS updates anymore, so it doesn’t surprise me that Homebrew stopped too.

Are you implying that a 6 year old hardware is as good as a paperweight? Outside of the Apple fairyland this is just bonkers.

I'm not blaming the Homebrew project/developers here, but the fact that many people are okay with deprecating perfectly fine hardware.

No, he’s asking what you think a reasonable support timeline is. An open source project supporting hardware 6 years old is pretty awesome.

6 years is really not a long time at all. You can probably find heaps of open source software out there that compiles and runs perfectly on 20 year old PCs. It's not like the maintainer has to do much to retain support--they just have to not make the software dependent on new operating systems.

Bits don't rot.

How many of those 20 year old projects had to go through an architecture change that the manufacturer no longs supports? Come on man be reasonable.

Ask MacPorts, which goes all the way back to Leopard-era PowerPC!

Homebrew doesn't have to lift a finger to support Intel Macs. It already does! All they have to do is not kill support for them.

Hey, it's their software, they are all volunteers and can do whatever they want. I'm grateful for the short window of time in which I was able to use their software. I don't get to decide their support period, but I will still hopelessly complain about it. "Deliberately breaking compatibility with a computer because it is old" is my biggest axe to grind with the whole software industry, and I'll shake my fists at this cloud until I die.

Software maintenance is not free, especially for a project the size of Homebrew, and it's perfectly reasonable for software to not be supported on older computers due to maintenance burden, with a good example being 32 bit processors. If you had a 32 bit processor would you expect all of your software that was supported now to be supported forever, just because it supports it now?

How does MacPorts manage to do it?

Why don't you ask them?

I would not expect the software to continue to get updates, but I would expect the software to continue to work.

I'm salty today because I tried to run Fusion 360, and found that Autodesk just out of the blue decided that 1. My computer is too old to run the software (which ran just fine a few weeks ago on the same computer); 2. That I needed to update the software, and 3. The update will not run on my "old" computer. They took software that ran fine on my computer and deliberately pulled the rug out. Fuck Autodesk. I'm spending the entire afternoon exporting dozens of files I have on their cloud, one at a time, since they apparently can't even manage to keep an existing version of the software running.

NixOS is an open source project that runs great on my 2013 Dell laptop. I think the real point of distinction is that brew depends on Apple's OS and SDK, which somewhat ties their hands, while other OSs don't.

There's been a huge step up in basically everything going from intel to apple silicon. It's not a comparable hardware in any sense, and as such, it really does feel like it became a paperweight? I know I never wanted to see an intel macbook ever again the moment I tried M1. It's maybe hard to comprehend how different it is if you haven't used both. And at the same time I'm happy with my x86 desktop for 10+ years. Only thing that really improved in that span was storage.

So I wouldn't say this applies globally to apple users/products, but the post-intel era is a special case. If nothing else, they are helping the environment by not feeding that (literally) hot garbage with more electricity.

Years, honestly. After all, Intel Macs just received a major macOS release from Apple only 12 months ago. MacPorts manages to support all the way back to Leopard!

I have one of the last Intel Macs and works perfectly fine (on Sonoma). How long should I expect working tech being supported?

I am already looking at Linux, but still need to get out of the Apple ecosystem. I am not going to spend +2500 Euros every 5 years on a laptop

Sonoma will be getting its last security update imminently (possibly tomorrow).

And given the performance jump from Intel to Apple Silicon, the perceived difference is 10+ years even.

Sure, but 2019s Intel Macs are aboslutely usable for most tasks, and given much of the agentic dev. happens... somewhere remotely, it is more an opportunity to reuse this equipment for various tasks, rather than pollute the already dirty Earth with more electronic waste.

1) usable for most tasks != pleasent to use for most tasks

2) using an Intel Mac as your main computer, for most tasks != using it as a home server

MacPorts has been there this whole time.

I've used MacPorts on macOS versions that don't support the latest OS, which per homebrew policy seems to be versions upto N-2.

Apart from the issue of having to compile the downloaded software leading to spinning fans, I'm not too concerned.

Same here, but I understand their position. Meanwhile I rely on packages publishing builds for Intel Mac in GitHub (surprisingly a lot) or building from source code. I just asked AI to build me install system.

FYI Macos will also stop with major updates for Intel macs. You can just keep using brew 6 on macos 26.

I’m installing Linux on my 2019 16” today.

Have you tried Mac Ports?

You do realize Intel support is gone, right? You won't be installing anything on your Intel Mac very soon...