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GNU
Raised as a usability problem by 63 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 60 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
Man pages only point to Info pages, which are harder to useUnreviewed
20102026- GNU docs live in a separate info system instead of man pages, making them harder to find2025-04-01
- Some manpages are useless and just point to info2022-04-11
- Man pages are too big for quick lookups yet too brief for real understanding2021-02-03
Info documentation is clunky and hard to find things inUnreviewed
20102026- Docs are comprehensive but hard to use as a quick reference when you don't know what to look for2024-05-13
- Info documentation is painful to navigate, so manual pages are preferred2022-05-03
- Can't quickly search docs because GNU projects use the verbose info system2014-07-07
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 50 complaints
- Viewing large line-scan images is painful; the tool feels overkill for the task2026-08-18
- Maintainers blame poor UX on users and reject usability feature requests2026-04-25
- Editor is very slow to respond to each keystroke2026-02-26
- Keyboard shortcuts are not intuitive, so the commander is hard to use2025-09-17
- Tab key is captured for panel switching, blocking shell tab completion; settings are complicated to change2025-09-17
- Most libraries can only be installed via Guix or tar files2025-08-27
- General help is only via mailing lists, hard to find and use2025-04-09
- GNU docs live in a separate info system instead of man pages, making them harder to find2025-04-01
- Generating flat binaries with linker scripts and make becomes hard to link and load2024-07-15
- Docs are comprehensive but hard to use as a quick reference when you don't know what to look for2024-05-13
- Contributing to GNU projects through email-based workflow is hard to do2023-10-12
- Lands on a forum-like page with no visible manual; download links are broken2023-07-29
- Simple tasks aren't obvious and documentation doesn't surface how to do them2023-06-04
- Toolchain setup is involved and the resulting build is convoluted and annoying to use2023-04-10
- Must be applied to every instance, so forgetting it is easy2023-01-07
- Couldn't find GNU on its own domain; also couldn't find gcc binaries for Solaris2022-09-06
- Has to re-read the docs each time to work out how to use it2022-07-27
- POSIX-style interface is awkward to use compared to ripgrep2022-07-25
- Generally broken and unusable for most people, so they won't use it2022-07-24
- Tool is clunky and awkward to use2022-06-23
- Fragile text-based interfaces cause many problems in shell scripting2022-06-09
- Info documentation is painful to navigate, so manual pages are preferred2022-05-03
- Some manpages are useless and just point to info2022-04-11
- Group separator options are missing from man grep, so users must hunt elsewhere2022-02-03
- Commenter says GNU software has bad or terrible user experience overall2021-12-29
- Must remember whether to include the 'g' prefix depending on the platform2021-11-23
- Hard to understand how the system works from the demo page2021-08-26
- Users must look up keyboard shortcuts in a manual or online to operate them2021-04-22
- Page is hard to read because of overly wide columns and styling that makes it less readable2021-04-08
- Man pages are too big for quick lookups yet too brief for real understanding2021-02-03
- Plot syntax is hard to discover and intuit, forcing constant doc lookups2021-01-03
- Interface is not user friendly, with poor UX2020-12-05
- Hard to build and not packaged, so users can't easily install it2020-11-18
- Character class names like alnum and xdigit are unclear, so readers cannot tell what they mean2020-09-04
- Building GNU packages is hard because they depend on each other circularly2020-05-03
- Files beginning with a dash get misread as options, causing confusing behaviour2020-04-21
- Average users won't tinker and struggle; GNU software onboarding is poor2020-04-03
- Insists on two spaces after a period, which the user finds annoying2020-01-31
- Hard to tell which gnulib version was copied into a project, so upgrades are painful2019-12-30
- Readline documentation is hard to find, spread across unexpected sites2019-10-10
- Programs lacking line editing and command history are painful to use2019-08-22
- Important warnings like extension-only functions are buried, not displayed prominently2019-05-29
- Manual has a bewildering array of options and few examples, making it hard to use2019-05-28
- Configure is slow and failures produce endless unrelated output that is hard to diagnose2018-07-11
- GNU project man pages are too large and cluttered to be useful2018-03-26
- Man pages are so large and overwhelming that the author avoided learning awk for years2018-03-26
- Author forgets the stow commands and must look them up again2017-09-08
- Most GNU/free projects have terrible UI/UX despite solving core problems2017-07-28
- Man pages are vague and redirect to info, wasting time during emergencies2017-06-02
- Stub man pages redirect to info, which makes you navigate many near-empty pages2016-10-12