[o_s_m]

Great answers folks. I don't think I will need it in the immediate future, and will attempt to only install necessary software that I anticipate that I will need. I bought the 4gb RAM MBA and it does well...much better in Chrome than in Safari..still learning.

[caw]

There's a project called CakeBrew (https://www.cakebrew.com/) that was featured on HN a while back. It adds a GUI to homebrew.