Products · Product
Wine
Raised as a usability problem by 35 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 35 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Wine setup needs many guides, choices and manual stepsUnreviewed
20112026- Creating Wine environments requires using the command line2025-09-07
- Requires a lot of configuration and has weird bugs2022-12-03
- Building Wine from source is confusing, and the wiki pages are hard to navigate2021-06-28
Compatibility components hard to enable until winetricks foundUnreviewed
20112026- Running Witcher 3 needed guesswork, forum digging, and a clunky unresponsive winetricks UI2024-12-31
- Figuring out how to enable compatibility components is a pain; not installed until found winetricks2022-12-18
- Getting all the needed dependencies to build Wine is the notably annoying part2021-06-27
Getting .NET apps working needs many extra manual stepsUnreviewed
20112026- Running native Windows apps is not no-fuss and doesn't just work2025-10-17
- Running even trivial apps requires obscure hoops; outdated wiki incantations no longer work2023-05-21
- Getting .NET apps to work requires many extra hoops to jump through2023-02-03
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 37 complaints
- Users can't tell about disk sharing behavior on first installation2026-04-07
- Hard to get random Windows programs set up and working properly2026-01-21
- Uneven frame pacing makes the game feel unplayable despite high frame rates2026-01-10
- Photoshop CS2 UI scaling does not work, making it unusable on 4K or 1440p displays2025-12-06
- Had to install a new Steam instance per game or tweak each game in shared bottles2025-11-13
- Message boxes appear hidden below the install progress window, making installs look stuck2025-10-26
- Running native Windows apps is not no-fuss and doesn't just work2025-10-17
- Creating Wine environments requires using the command line2025-09-07
- Configuration knowledge scattered across dozens of forum posts, hard to figure out2025-08-11
- Wineserver processes are hard to see and manage; prefix tools feel poor2025-05-19
- Running Witcher 3 needed guesswork, forum digging, and a clunky unresponsive winetricks UI2024-12-31
- Running even trivial apps requires obscure hoops; outdated wiki incantations no longer work2023-05-21
- Games were nearly impossible to install, so the user switched products2023-04-01
- Hard to figure out what is going on; data is outdated and ratings are subjective2023-02-08
- Getting .NET apps to work requires many extra hoops to jump through2023-02-03
- Figuring out how to enable compatibility components is a pain; not installed until found winetricks2022-12-18
- Requires a lot of configuration and has weird bugs2022-12-03
- A feature is enabled by default and disabling it uses dark patterns2022-01-19
- Games run in Wine feel laggier with lower FPS than native Windows2022-01-17
- Building Wine from source is confusing, and the wiki pages are hard to navigate2021-06-28
- Getting all the needed dependencies to build Wine is the notably annoying part2021-06-27
- Took hours of config guide reading to get games working2021-02-03
- Windows apps run through Wine have a UX almost as bad as native alternatives2020-09-27
- Installing the Jet database engine is a hurdle because it isn't bundled2020-06-05
- Video playback needs many workarounds, and crash logs don't point to the real cause2020-01-21
- Botched the system several times installing the needed 32-bit libraries2019-06-21
- Using Wine requires the command line and winetricks, with inevitable gymnastics on macOS2019-01-23
- Hard to get games running; a week of patching and hunting for the right version2018-10-29
- Required following a long guide to flash devices under Wine2018-01-18
- Information is poorly presented, making it hard to use2018-01-18
- Getting Wine working requires many guides, choices and manual steps2017-01-24
- Theme support was terribly slow to use2016-11-14
- Wine runs games so slowly that the software is effectively unusable2016-02-21
- Drag and drop doesn't work properly and the folder layout is confusing and awkward2015-12-17
- Photoshop CS5 becomes unusable due to a known regression2012-03-09
- Windows apps run through Wine are very slow to use2011-08-27
- Wine is hard to use, so Windows apps can't easily run on Linux2011-04-29