Motif
Ranked 23 of 45 GUI frameworks by recommenders
People recommend Motif for its clean, utilitarian look and its long-lived, stable APIs on Unix desktops. The most common caveat is that critics found it hard and tedious to develop with.
People recommend Motif for its clean, utilitarian look and its long-lived, stable APIs on Unix desktops. The most common caveat is that critics found it hard and tedious to develop with.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 50%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Clean, utilitarian look
“I miss Motif. This is a portal to a time when men were men and UNIX(R)—or in this case, VMS—desktops were utilitarian and did exactly what you needed and nothing more.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “DECwindows Motif” “I really enjoyed Motif and the general flat clean look that came with eg TWM and co.”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Stolen Buttons” “UI design peaked with Motif Window Manager and has gone downhill ever since.”
Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “Wayland desktop for Linux with skeuomorphic design” Fondly remembered from its era
“I miss Motif. This is a portal to a time when men were men and UNIX(R)—or in this case, VMS—desktops were utilitarian and did exactly what you needed and nothing more.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “DECwindows Motif” “Motif was ugly, but I look at it fondly now.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “FVWM-95 (2001)” Stable APIs that worked well
“Motif was something of a nightmare to work with”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “DECwindows Motif” “Xlib and Motif are stable APIs.”
Comment from 10 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11” Established Unix GUI standard
“Motif and CDE were already established as the Unix GUI API”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Later” “If it uses Motif and IrisGL”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Adobe Photoshop 1.0 Source Code (2013)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard and painful to develop with
“Motif did have a reputation for being a total drag to develop with”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “What Sun got wrong” “I better not dwell to long or I'll have flashbacks t coding X/Motif UI's.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Usenet Personality” “Motif was something of a nightmare to work with”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “DECwindows Motif” - Comment from 10 Mar 2026 in “Restoring a Sun SPARCstation IPX Part 1: PSU and Nvram”
- Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Run ancient UNIX on modern hardware”
Dated, ugly or unremarkable look
“Motif did not jump out as "wow that looks good" IMHO”
Comment from 1 Mar 2026 in “The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering” “a lot like a monochrome Windows 3.1 that used too many pixels”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “FVWM-95 (2001)” “Motif was ugly, but I look at it fondly now.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “FVWM-95 (2001)” Poor standardization across versions
“I would've hoped that Motif being in use by more people than just the devs of one homebrew Unix desktop would mean that we wouldn't have suffered through that much versionitis”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “DECwindows Motif” “it wasn't like, meaningfully standardized. just no one ever updated anything.”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “DECwindows Motif”
Other GUI frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other GUI frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qt | 191 | 133 | 59% | 12 | 15 yrs7 owners | — |
| GTK | 85 | 118 | 42% | 12 | — | — |
| Windows Forms | 76 | 33 | 70% | 12 | 15 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| SwiftUI | 75 | 121 | 38% | 11 | 4 yrs8 owners | — |
| MotifThis page | 17 | 17 | 50% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
32 of the 36 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“UI design peaked with Motif Window Manager and has gone downhill ever since.”
“CUA is from IBM and Motif is using CUA.”
“Motif did have a reputation for being a total drag to develop with”
“I think motif was fine for its time, but definitely not much better than OpenLook.”
“the awful gui toolkit motif”
“UNIX historically had a very bad UI toolkit (Motif)”
“I really enjoyed Motif and the general flat clean look that came with eg TWM and co.”
“Motif always looked a bit unfinished”
“Motif and CDE were already established as the Unix GUI API”
“GDI, QuickDraw, and Motif did much better back then”
“tons of people on Unix still hate C++ (Motif a bit less)”
“which was a little buggy and leaked memory”
“Motif was hell to develop for though.”
“Shame it wasn't under an open license to begin with”
“Motif did not jump out as "wow that looks good" IMHO”
“the ergonomics for administrators and developers was absolutely horrid”
“I better not dwell to long or I'll have flashbacks t coding X/Motif UI's.”
“it did not address the endianness of the arguments to the library functions”
“it wasn't like, meaningfully standardized. just no one ever updated anything.”
“the "demo" Motif Window Manager worked pretty well”
“Motif was something of a nightmare to work with”
“I would've hoped that Motif being in use by more people than just the devs of one homebrew Unix desktop would mean that we wouldn't have suffered through that much versionitis”
“I miss Motif. This is a portal to a time when men were men and UNIX(R)—or in this case, VMS—desktops were utilitarian and did exactly what you needed and nothing more.”
“Will XMotif suddenly change the world and apps will be written in it? Absolutely not. It's not even a thing on the minuscule Linux desktop”
“Xlib and Motif are stable APIs.”
“If it uses Motif and IrisGL”
“the big aesthetic of early Qt/KDE1 is "Obvious Motif ripoff"”
“a lot like a monochrome Windows 3.1 that used too many pixels”
“Motif was ugly, but I look at it fondly now.”
“Motif on the Unix side of things was a bit better, but not much.”
“the compilation with Motif was a bear”
“lack of Motif is a big omission”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.