# Bazaar

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Bazaar and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for an easy-to-use GNOME app store and a version control system whose merges work as expected; critics say it is slower than git and Canonical dropped it.

## Why people recommend it

- Merges work as expected (3 comments): "The default merge type from a branch should be a merge commit and git log should only show the first parent" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450998)) "Bazaar (now breezy) allowed having a nested "merge commit"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47311303)) "Whereas bzr just did the expected thing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47319554))
- Easy to use and understand (2 comments): "it had an easy way to plugin "revision" into my documents in a way I could understand" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765593)) "moved to bazaar which was really easy and nice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947883))
- Impressive, polished app store (2 comments): "The included Bazaar app store is very impressive compared to something like the apple app store." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151628)) "was surprised at the quality of some of the apps available on the Bazaar store" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265369))

## What people warn about

- Slower than git (3 comments): "while slower than git, was performant enough for my needs at the time I used it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47646184)) "it was noticeably slower than git, though" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124940)) "even the distributed ones like bzr or hg were slow as hell" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979385))
- Flatpak only, little beyond existing stores (2 comments): "I wouldn't call it an "app store" since it works with flatpak only." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095685)) "Bazaar does not much at the moment beyond what Gnome Software or KDE's Discover is capable of." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46145457))
- Abandoned by Canonical (3 comments): "Canonical pushed it for many years after git was obviously the better choice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727180)) "attempted to uproot for no purpose other than Canonical wanted more control" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47724208)) "last release was 2016, Canonical retired it last year" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762930))
- Odd sexual preference settings (2 comments): "Sexual preferences in Bazaar options tool to update flatpaks seems out of place" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46969321)) "has sexual preference options which is always concerning to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871603))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Git](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git.md): 814 recommend
- [Jujutsu (jj)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jujutsu.md): 335 recommend
- [Mercurial](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mercurial.md): 121 recommend
- [jj (Jujutsu)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jj.md): 115 recommend
- [Fossil](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fossil.md): 106 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Bazaar", https://hackerapproved.com/p/bazaar/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).