# Launchpad by Canonical

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Launchpad by Canonical and 18 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Canonical's code hosting and bug tracker, recommended as an early, well-regarded option before GitHub; critics call it flaky, archaic and neglected.

## Why people recommend it

- Predated GitHub and had early CI (2 comments): "Launchpad predated GitHub by a lot. canonical just played those cards horribly and lost." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725630)) "Launchpad had something like CI before everyone from what I remember." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47942428))

## What people warn about

- Frequent outages and flaky service (4 comments): "Launchpad was down for most of that time (despite Canonical reporting that it was back up) so many people can't update." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48009157)) "Launchpad doesn’t have the bandwidth for half the world to all update at the same time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50185340)) "The launchpad server is throwing 503 errors all over the place" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50182072))
- Neglected, bugs left unfixed (4 comments): "It was deprioritized for years, the team gutted to staff other shinier projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732169)) "I feel like launchpad is totally ignored most of the time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49698412)) "all of the Ubuntu LaunchPad bugs being left hanging" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952722))
- Archaic and clunky to use (3 comments): "Even to this day there is a complex and archaic process of using Launchpad where git is tacked on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727180)) "It's an insanely archaic system and borderline non-functional." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47729311)) "most of those, except maybe gitlab, were clunky AF to use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971843))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [GitHub](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github.md): 764 recommend
- [Forgejo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/forgejo.md): 380 recommend
- [GitLab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitlab.md): 331 recommend
- [Codeberg](https://hackerapproved.com/p/codeberg.md): 331 recommend
- [Gitea](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitea.md): 195 recommend

## Cite as

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