D-Bus
Message bus in Developer tools
Widely used Linux message bus that many people consider the standard for desktop inter-process communication, though critics call its design and security poorly suited to the job.
Widely used Linux message bus that many people consider the standard for desktop inter-process communication, though critics call its design and security poorly suited to the job.
50 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 36
- approval share
- 28%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Standard for desktop and Wayland communication
“Dbus is the standard for client communication with Wayland compositors outside the core protocol.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution” “My only interaction with D-Bus as a layman is xdg-desktop-protocol”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” Used everywhere, proven in practice
“it's everywhere because it's damned useful and no one has any better ideas worth considering”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Systemd Linger” “D-Bus has been used everywhere from LG TVs to automotives, so at least it f*cking works.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “D-bus had been around for a decade.”
Comment from 16 Aug 2026 in “Tess's Android Wayland Compositor” Standard logic for remote objects
“There's actual standard logic for remotely-existing objects vs. just RPC”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “enables some sort of interoperability and automation”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak security and permissions
“this protocol is just terrible: it could have been made much much more secure without any kind of virtualisation or sandboxing”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “Literally any program running as your user can connect to dbus, grab your secrets and slurp your home directory.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “Dbus is this other system that has some security options but that rarely is well locked down.”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Flatpak – An Insecurity Nightmare (2023)” - Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma”
- Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop”
- Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop”
Crashes and reboots after updates
“Maybe it should be treated better, not rebooting it every couple of times.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “when dbus was updated you could not just restart the dbus daemon, you were required to hard reboot”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “It is unacceptable that my desktop environment crashes just because something floods the dbus API”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” Overcomplicated and hard to model
“the situation is so convoluted that it's hard to build a mental model”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “Dbus is a godawful mess. Imagine the windows registry, except it can only be inspected at runtime”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop” “dbus exists, but it's overcomplicated for something which should be easy to make.”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “CVE-2026-3888: Important Snap Flaw Enables Local Privilege Escalation to Root”
What people said
40 of the 63 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Dbus is this other system that has some security options but that rarely is well locked down.”
“turned Linux into a hairy ball of microservices that breaks at the most inconvenient moments”
“There is only one systemd --user session per user with one D-Bus instance.”
“Binder predates Dbus and uses less memory than Dbus, which is important in memory constrained devices.”
“D-bus had been around for a decade.”
“we just need the DBUS developers to get their heads out of their asses”
“it's everywhere because it's damned useful and no one has any better ideas worth considering”
“even less reason to interact with dbus or any desktop components”
“It's exactly this kind of arrogant attitude that makes me hate everything from dbus onward.”
“dbus exists, but it's overcomplicated for something which should be easy to make.”
“It has a lot of problems especially with protocol standartization and permissions.”
“free of systemd, wayland, dbus, and other troublesome software”
“There's actual standard logic for remotely-existing objects vs. just RPC”
“I don't have dbus installed on my linux due to security and privacy concerns.”
“Meanwhile using dbus you can call things wrong and it will still compile.”
“There's nothing unique about D-Bus from a usability standpoint that can't be done with a service listening over UDS.”
“Even if you clean it up, what you will wind up with is an aggressively polished turd.”
“Literally any program running as your user can connect to dbus, grab your secrets and slurp your home directory.”
“this protocol is just terrible: it could have been made much much more secure without any kind of virtualisation or sandboxing”
“My only interaction with D-Bus as a layman is xdg-desktop-protocol”
“DBus is a mess because from the ground up, it was and is riddled with many, many shortcomings”
“the situation is so convoluted that it's hard to build a mental model”
“Dbus is a godawful mess. Imagine the windows registry, except it can only be inspected at runtime”
“D-Bus has no concept of generic services. People are using D-Bus to get automatic startup of generic services even though it's not fit for this purpose.”
“when dbus was updated you could not just restart the dbus daemon, you were required to hard reboot”
“D-Bus is just the latest in a series of attempts to bring Microsoft's janky”
“D-Bus isnt that terribly shit either, we just need to solve this SecretManager issue...”
“there is no mechanism for the user to select which file manager to start”
“But that's not a problem of the dbus design.”
“The architecture is fundamentally broken when you are using multiple window managers / desktop environments”
“Wayland protocols are only about 1000x nicer to use than dbus”
“Maybe it should be treated better, not rebooting it every couple of times.”
“any app on the bus can read all secrets in the store if the store is unlocked”
“It is unacceptable that my desktop environment crashes just because something floods the dbus API”
“enables some sort of interoperability and automation”
“there shouldn't be a "get all secrets via dbus" escape hatch”
“D-Bus has been used everywhere from LG TVs to automotives, so at least it f*cking works.”
“many many more developers who understand it compared to dbus”
“Dbus is the standard for client communication with Wayland compositors outside the core protocol.”
“they're not quite interchangeable as they might change on a whim.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.