Products · Product
GNUstep
Raised as a usability problem by 15 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2010–2025), 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
Wiki is confusing and hard to see how close GNUstep is to CocoaUnreviewed
20102026- GNUstep apps feel clunky and break after OS updates2025-09-05
- Creates a ~/GNUstep folder even for users who never use GNUstep directly2023-02-10
- Wiki is confusing; hard to find how close GNUstep is to Cocoa2013-05-04
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 15 complaints
- GNUstep apps feel clunky and break after OS updates2025-09-05
- Text is too small to read comfortably on a 27-inch screen2023-08-05
- User couldn't discover the hotkey for switching windows and didn't know to look for it2023-08-04
- Building for GNUstep and macOS needs two parallel build setups, and GNUmakefile macros are confusing2023-08-04
- Creates a ~/GNUstep folder even for users who never use GNUstep directly2023-02-10
- UI is outdated and developers resist modernizing it, making it less useful2021-12-13
- Cluttered, messy, and ugly interface that is hard to use2021-12-13
- Uses Alt instead of Cmd, so shortcuts feel unfamiliar and inconsistent with other platforms2020-10-27
- Gorm and ProjectManager were buggy for a long time, hindering developers2017-01-12
- Lags so far behind Cocoa that apps are practically unusable for developers2015-08-27
- Hard to get running, lacking docs, requiring digging through mailing lists2014-01-01
- Wiki is confusing; hard to find how close GNUstep is to Cocoa2013-05-04
- Constant problems getting the Objective-C toolchain working on Ubuntu and Windows2012-11-27
- Documentation is lacking, so unclear whether Cocoa code works under GNUStep2011-11-07
- Commenter can't get used to the detachable NeXTSTEP-style menus2010-06-22