# pkgsrc 21 Hacker News commenters recommended pkgsrc and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** pkgsrc is a portable package manager that runs on many operating systems, builds the same recipes across 20+ platforms, and allows unprivileged installs. ## Why people recommend it - Runs on many operating systems (5 comments): "pkgsrc probably is one of NetBSDs biggest impacts being using by lots of other OSs from Minix to illumos." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143161)) "The ability to run recent packages on most arch without them forcing you to use NetBSD" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694833)) "I'm using pkgsrc on illumos (Tribblix). So, "of course it runs pkgsrc", also." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140667)) - Core package manager of NetBSD (2 comments): "won me over with the NetBSD pkgsrc package manager... Very nice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711907)) "pkgsrc is one of the strong points of NetBSD" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50277665)) - Simple and easy to start (2 comments): "pkgsrc is relatively simple to comprehend, and easy to get started, compared to other build packaging solutions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49695580)) "it’s extremely straightforward" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46354761)) - Better design than Homebrew (2 comments): "Nix, Pkgsrc, MacPorts, and (and now Spack) all have better fundamental designs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45907988)) "I find it so much more elegant than homebrew." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49695855)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Nix](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nix.md): 378 recommend - [Homebrew](https://hackerapproved.com/p/homebrew.md): 271 recommend - [npm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/npm.md): 161 recommend - [pnpm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pnpm.md): 124 recommend - [Cargo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cargo.md): 123 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "pkgsrc", https://hackerapproved.com/p/pkgsrc/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).