As a casual user I like Brew. As a long time mac developer and private cask maintainer(no longer thankfully), I wish there was something close to what the Linux ecosystem has.
As a casual user (install something once every 6 months), I can't even keep brew's insane terminology straight. If I was a REGULAR casual user, I'm sure it would be fine.
Have you tried MacPorts?
I tried it, but everything required sudo and that wasn’t an option at the time. I primarily develop in Windows(on a Mac) now because Unity runs much better on windows than Mac OS.
You can install MacPorts into a local directory without admin privileges.