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dd
Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2012–2023), in 12 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Writing an ISO with dd is so slow it's almost unusableUnreviewed
20122026- Hard to remember the dd progress option, which is specific to dd2023-05-19
- Dd silently copies fewer bytes on partial reads unless iflag=fullblock is given2022-10-25
- Writing an ISO with dd is so slow it's almost unusable, with no clear reason2021-10-18
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 16 complaints
- Hard to remember the dd progress option, which is specific to dd2023-05-19
- Hard to figure out how to emulate seek and skip with other POSIX commands2022-10-25
- Unusual syntax and arcane details like sector sizes make it clunky and easy to misuse2022-10-25
- Dd silently copies fewer bytes on partial reads unless iflag=fullblock is given2022-10-25
- Easy to write to the wrong device path, making writes very slow on macOS2021-10-18
- Writing an ISO with dd is so slow it's almost unusable, with no clear reason2021-10-18
- Users find dd's input/output argument naming hard to learn and easy to mix up2021-01-24
- Repeated tools failed to produce a bootable Windows USB on macOS2021-01-24
- Remembering numeric file descriptors has poor usability for programs2018-06-16
- Using dd for disk recovery destroyed the drive and left an unusable partial image2017-03-30
- Easy to get device arguments wrong, so the commenter checks repeatedly2017-02-02
- Command is named unintuitively and its man page does not convey its power or danger2016-03-30
- Checking progress requires opening another tab and running a separate command2016-01-13
- Dd's key=value arguments are inconsistent with cp, making commands hard to learn2015-04-23
- Progress bar only appears if you send it a signal, so it's hard to discover2014-10-21
- Dd's cryptic, deliberately awkward design is hard to use2012-08-03