Homebrew on ARM64 Linux

Ruoyu Zhong

This talk was presented at FOSDEM 2025 at l’Université libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium.

Homebrew, the popular package manager, thrives on macOS and x86_64 Linux, but a small group of hobbyists has also been leveraging it on ARM64-based Linux devices like Raspberry Pis to install up-to-date software. While Homebrew is not officially supported on ARM64 Linux 1, this talk explores the technical hurdles for adapting the package manager to this platform. We’ll examine the work done so far and the ongoing work needed to make Homebrew more accessible and reliable for ARM64 Linux users.

Slides available here. Video available at FOSDEM’s site.

  1. Two days later, at Homebrew’s 2025 Annual General Meeting, we decided to officially support ARM64 Linux. ARM64 Linux was then formally announced as a Tier-2 supported platform in Homebrew 4.5.0 in April 2025. ↩︎