OpenSSH

Raised as a usability problem by 11 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2013–2026), in 10 threads.

People raised many different problems with OpenSSH, 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 11 complaints

Text is too small on iPhone when zoomed out to show full width2026-07-07
Config precedence is unintuitive and users must memorise it from the manual2025-04-06
Users would need convoluted workarounds to keep using old DSA-dependent SSH setups2024-01-12
Multiple nested shell escaping layers make remote commands easy to get wrong2023-07-14
The key encryption option is hidden, absent from short help and man page examples2018-08-03
Ssh logs in with a wrong username combining Windows user and host, needs -l flag2017-12-12
Cannot make ssh-keygen write key files; even current directory fails with invalid argument2017-12-12
Keys silently fail without correct file permissions, and passwords cannot be passed on the command line2016-12-08
Wrong sftp path fails silently; client shows only a dropped connection, no logged error2016-08-09
Enter-tilde-period escape key choice is risky when keystrokes get through but display updates do not2016-05-04
Enabling both password and key auth means either works, not both; unintuitive gotcha2013-10-02