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GRUB
Raised as a usability problem by 17 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 14 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
Edits to grub config are silently overwritten by generator scriptsUnreviewed
20122026- Editing config files is undone silently when package upgrades rerun the generator script2024-04-13
- Config requires multiple layers of scripts and a generated grub.cfg, which is confusing to edit2022-04-21
- Edits to grub config get silently overwritten by generator scripts2016-08-09
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 18 complaints
- GRUB's UX for booting Linux and debugging boot failures is neglected2026-05-07
- Looks scary to new users and breaks when Windows updates change boot entries2025-06-19
- Described as pretty much unusable as a shell due to its old idioms2025-05-04
- Boot menu window too short and no visible key hint, so users can't reliably reach it2024-07-09
- Autoconfig breaks on reboot when it guesses wrong, leaving boot hard to fix2024-05-01
- Complex configuration and poor defaults make GRUB hard to understand and use2024-04-13
- Install scripts are broken and grab arbitrary environment state, making non-host installs hard2024-04-13
- Editing config files is undone silently when package upgrades rerun the generator script2024-04-13
- Modern boot configuration is complex, needing lots of documentation to do simple tasks2023-07-18
- Installing Linux often overwrites the Windows boot loader, leaving users stuck in Linux-only boot2022-11-14
- Config requires multiple layers of scripts and a generated grub.cfg, which is confusing to edit2022-04-21
- GRUB 2 is much worse than GRUB 1 and is a pain to deal with2022-04-06
- Made the Windows reserved partition unusable and could not recover it2018-06-08
- Installs to MBR with no error despite failing; initrd not found2016-08-09
- Config can't be verified before reboot; failures require hard manual recovery2016-08-09
- Edits to grub config get silently overwritten by generator scripts2016-08-09
- Config is scattered across undocumented scripts saying not to touch them, hard to change2014-09-23
- Insufficient error/debug output and unclear state make boot trial-and-error2012-06-29