Puppet
Ranked 3 of 5 configuration management tools by recommenders
Recommended for managing large server fleets as a mature configuration management system. Critics call it complex, dated and slow.
Recommended for managing large server fleets as a mature configuration management system. Critics call it complex, dated and slow.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 52%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 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
Mature, proven at large scale
“You can manage and reason about ~2000+ servers without Kubernetes, even with a relatively small team”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “We have Configuration Management systems like Puppet in mature enough state for over a decade now.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “A well run Ansible or Puppet or similar environment works on a completely different scale.”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins” - Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you safely give LLMs SSH/DB access?”
Better than bash scripts
“the vast majority of them that isn't bash scripts is better and more maintainable than their equivalents in pure bash would be”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “A Decade of Docker Containers” “Using actual configuration management (in my case Puppet, tho Ansible is lighter choice) is just all around better way”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “My .config Ship of Theseus” Preferred over Kubernetes for fleets
“You can manage and reason about ~2000+ servers without Kubernetes, even with a relatively small team”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “You're better off managing things with Puppet or Salt”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “Production-Grade Container Deployment with Podman Quadlets – Larvitz Blog” “or with tools like Puppet and Ansible a bit later”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Complex, fragile, disliked DSLs
“I hate ansible too (and puppet and cfengine that I have previously used)”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “I don't miss sshing into servers or using puppet, ansible, salt, chef.”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?” “I would never return to something like Pupet / Ansible / etc”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” - Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud”
- Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Why I love NixOS”
Seen as dated and slow
“if you are on a cloud like aws and using a config management system for mutable infra like puppet you are taking unnecessary complexity and living in the dark ages”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “Puppet is a slow, decades old application.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (May 2026)” “wait until you have to use puppet”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Ansible battle tested hardening for Linux, SSH, Nginx, MySQL” Imperative features add complexity
“all of them ran into problems in real-world use cases that needed common imperative language features to solve”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “All these started with pure declarative DSL then incrementally created a nightmarish imperative monstrosity.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “CSS now has an if() conditional function” “IaC tools like Ansible/Puppet are good alternatives, but coding the whole configuration is not comfortable”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Bor – Open-source policy management for Linux desktops” Push-based mutable infrastructure criticized
“if you are on a cloud like aws and using a config management system for mutable infra like puppet you are taking unnecessary complexity and living in the dark ages”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “solved most of the problems of these centrally-controlled push-based systems.”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Finding the grain of sand in a heap of Salt”
Other configuration management tools people recommend
The four most recommended other configuration management tools, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ansible | 120 | 71 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| PyInfra | 30 | 4 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| PuppetThis page | 16 | 15 | 52% | 10 | — | — |
| Progress Chef | 10 | 11 | 48% | 7 | — | — |
| Salt | 9 | 7 | 56% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
30 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the CFEngine / Puppet type tooling we had for Linux at the time”
“I don't miss sshing into servers or using puppet, ansible, salt, chef.”
“From the looks of it it only tries to replace puppet.”
“IaC tools like Ansible/Puppet are good alternatives, but coding the whole configuration is not comfortable”
“what nix or even Puppet gets you”
“I would never return to something like Pupet / Ansible / etc”
“Puppet is a slow, decades old application.”
“Using actual configuration management (in my case Puppet, tho Ansible is lighter choice) is just all around better way”
“the Chef/Puppet soup before that”
“All of those other tools are complicated and fragile”
“A well run Ansible or Puppet or similar environment works on a completely different scale.”
“awful DSLs such as Salt, Puppet, Chef, etc.”
“Puppet has a ton of transitive Ruby libraries and config files/caches that it leaves around”
“the vast majority of them that isn't bash scripts is better and more maintainable than their equivalents in pure bash would be”
“public repo taken private and builds commercialized by Perforce in 2024”
“I use fqdn_rand [1] in puppet for most cron jobs”
“struggles with a lot of cross-platform Puppet tooling that I wish behaved better on Mac”
“Author should explore Ansible/Puppet/Chef.”
“every one of which was designed to do systems administration at scale”
“wait until you have to use puppet”
“all of them ran into problems in real-world use cases that needed common imperative language features to solve”
“All these started with pure declarative DSL then incrementally created a nightmarish imperative monstrosity.”
“solved most of the problems of these centrally-controlled push-based systems.”
“You're better off managing things with Puppet or Salt”
“or with tools like Puppet and Ansible a bit later”
“We have Configuration Management systems like Puppet in mature enough state for over a decade now.”
“I hate ansible too (and puppet and cfengine that I have previously used)”
“if you are on a cloud like aws and using a config management system for mutable infra like puppet you are taking unnecessary complexity and living in the dark ages”
“You can manage and reason about ~2000+ servers without Kubernetes, even with a relatively small team”
“This no different than puppet or ansible on bare metal complexoty-wise”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.