I was wondering why people choose to install Ubuntu when OS X is already a great UNIX? I genuinely want to know since I consider myself as being close to an intermidiate developer and find that OS X is great for all my UNIX needs and if there is a tool I'm missing, more than likely, homebrew already has it. So what am I really missing? Why do people install Ubuntu?
It's also open and you're able to change it, tinker with it, mold it. You actually know where everything is. It's generally a lot cleaner as well: Apple litters the entire filesystem with stuff you don't know where it came from, or what they affect.
I believe faster boot times are also a factor, some people can get their Linuxes to boot nearly instantaneous. Perhaps battery life as well.
I use OS X and am happy with it because I don't demand any of that to be productive/enjoy my system, but I can certainly enumerate things I don't like about it and would rather have the "native" FreeBSD approach or a Linuxy one.
Some OS X tools try to make up the difference (homebrew, like you said it), but like any race where you start behind you're not gonna win. Especially since the other competitors have decades of experience.
OS X is basically a tradeoff. Some people aren't willing to trade away too much, or have personal choices which are more important to them than to you or me.
That said, I'd try to get Linux running natively on a Mac if I had that inclination, not under Parallels or some other emulator. That just feels the opposite of "clean" to me.
I love OS X though. The thing I like about it is, yes it does have UNIX but it is also user friendly and has a ton of awesome apps and access to the Mac App Store.
I've tried mac few times and always run back to (k)ubuntu. Its great hardware and its definitely better than windows, but all lowlevel "unix stuff" is not a match for ubuntu.
No need to apologize for the ignorance you are seeking to dispel.