Products · Product
Pacman
Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 10 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
Search and install flags are non-standard and hard to rememberUnreviewed
20092026- Searching for installed packages requires googling obscure single-letter flags2024-07-18
- Flags for search and install are non-standard and hard to remember2011-11-08
- Hard to remember the arcane flags needed to update packages2009-08-13
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 12 complaints
- Needs 4-5 separate commands to see installed and available packages2025-09-10
- Continues upgrade silently, burying disk-full error in long log output2025-01-12
- Searching for installed packages requires googling obscure single-letter flags2024-07-18
- AUR package dependencies get ignored on updates, causing repeated breakage the user must fix2022-06-11
- Repeating y in flag changes meaning, so users must memorize esoteric option syntax2022-03-19
- CLI relies on flags instead of subcommands, forcing subshells and pipelines for common tasks2021-11-06
- Ordinary updates can accidentally uninstall all kernels because upgrade and dist-upgrade aren't distinguished2021-11-06
- Commands and options are hard to remember, so users must look them up repeatedly2021-05-15
- Hard to remember exact commands for upgrading or installing packages2017-01-07
- Flags for search and install are non-standard and hard to remember2011-11-08
- Confusing mode flags: -S means sync for installing packages, unintuitive naming2011-11-08
- Hard to remember the arcane flags needed to update packages2009-08-13