Ollama

Raised as a usability problem by 28 people on Hacker News over 3 years (2024–2026), in 19 threads.

People raised many different problems with Ollama, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

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 27 complaints

Installer overwrites pinned packages and custom systemd service files, creating a mess to clean up2026-09-28
Local model inference made laptop fans spin up and made the machine largely unusable for development2026-09-16
Users have to sift through many models, options and settings2026-09-14
Model names don't show whether a variant is MoE or dense, which is confusing2026-08-12
Too many cryptic model names make it hard to find a working model2026-04-16
Connection handling makes downloading models practically unusable2026-04-16
Changing context size needs a new model file or env var, so models seem dumb2026-04-16
Models get copied into hashed blobs, so other tools can't reuse the same GGUF file2026-04-16
Model names hide size, quantization and distill details, so users can't tell what they downloaded2026-04-03
Search option hidden for local models that support tools, shown only for cloud models2026-03-31
Must import models via Modelfiles or store Ollama's own file format, can't reuse a plain model directory2026-01-29
No UI, so non-developers find it hard to use without the CLI2025-08-09
Uninstall option is hidden, forcing manual removal instead2025-08-06
Can't figure out how to connect Raycast and Goose; unclear documentation2025-08-06
Model selector visually draws attention despite rarely changing, cluttering the chat box2025-08-04
Must start a chat with an undownloaded model to trigger the download, which is confusing2025-07-31
Default context length silently truncates prompts without any visible warning2025-04-29
Model names don't make clear which variant is the real DeepSeek-R12025-02-03
Has to go to the model page to find which models are available2025-02-01
Importing a local GGUF file requires an extra Modelfile step, which is mildly annoying2024-06-16
Buttons lack tooltips, and New Chat and Add Chat share the same keybind2024-02-17
User installed only the Python package and missed the underlying model2024-02-09
Installer silently adds login items and background processes with no opt-out or explanation2024-02-08
Must create a separate model file for every model, a tedious extra step2024-01-25
Non-standard installer hides what gets installed and where, unlike normal macOS installers2024-01-25
Mac install includes a hidden desktop app that is undocumented, so users can't tell what they got2024-01-25
Install silently adds login item, prompts for admin with no way to cancel2024-01-25