Things like macports and pkgsrc do things in an arguably much simpler, more unixy way, without the contortions that so often seem to leave homebrew in a bind after routine operations like updating.

Also, assuming a downstream distro like Debian or Ubuntu, what's in Homebrew is likely a more up to date package. You could fiddle with adding/using Debian testing or some PPA, or... you could just use Homebrew.

(FWIW: I use Arch and the AUR on my desktop Linux installs these days, and it's essentially the same process. But still using Homebrew on the Mac, and occasionally in Linux when I'm not on a desktop)