I think MacPorts still supports PowerPC Macs. I would need to rebuild my G5 to verify it because the hard disk is long dead, but last time I checked, it worked.
replyI get it - it’s a different beast with very different ideas behind it, but MacPorts is BSD-solid, and that’s a lot.
I agree in principle but Homebrew only supports the latest 3 versions of macOS. Right now Ventura 13 which came out in October 2022 is unsupported.
replyI still think that's entirely fair for a power user tool like homebrew. With the upgrade rates of macOS that probably means that's 98% of the users would be covered. Expecting an open source project to accept bug requests from a bigger variety of versions that then would need test devices on these versions to replicate issues sounds unrealistic. Bigger companies, or Apple itself I would hold to much higher standards when it comes to that.
reply> power user tool like homebrew.
replyThat makes no sense then. A power user may still want to run older OS versions for a reason. Take the training wheels off it and then it'll be a power user tool.
> A power user may still want to run older OS versions for a reason.
replyNo doubt there are edge cases like that, but I don't fault a project for not catering to the < 1% of users who would fall into that bucket and would probably be the ones that cause trickier support cases. These would maybe also be the user that could just install it without homebrew then, it's not like homebrew is the only way to install software.
This is not an edge case. Most HN commenters describe the latest two versions of macOS as being objectively worse than earlier versions: slower, less stable, more broken. There are significant numbers of “power users” who deliberately avoid upgrading or have actively downgraded macOS to Sonoma because they care about their computing experience.
replyPeople who downgraded to Sonoma are the definition of an edge case, maybe you hear from some of them on HN and it sounds like a big group but this is a niche of a niche.
replybrew used to say, more or less, "This OS is old and unsupported. Don't submit bug reports. If you have problems, too bad. If you submit a PR to fix something, we might merge it". Fair enough, right? Now it just says, "Go fuck yourself, grandpa."
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