# ROS 2

11 Hacker News commenters recommended ROS 2 and 25 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, widely shared framework of tools and conventions for building robot software; people value its community and ecosystem, though its code quality and setup are often criticized.

## Why people recommend it

- Common standard for robotics community (4 comments): "it's still the only stake in the ground around which we've manage to corral a community" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125917)) "Yes it is terrible, but the alternatives are even worse" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017710)) "They could Just have used ROS..." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49722528))
- Free with useful ecosystem conventions (2 comments): "it's free and available and absolutely gives you a good idea of the kinds of workflows you will see" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46541785)) "I don't think the Open Robotics supplied debs are suitable for most product deployments" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47338839))
- Good tutorials and learning workflows (3 comments): "it's better to play with simple hardware and build the things that ROS is ultimately abstracting over before you try to pick up ROS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017768)) "it's free and available and absolutely gives you a good idea of the kinds of workflows you will see" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46541785)) "Go through the ROS tutorials, using a simulated robot at first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46936367))
- Design rationale explains odd parts (2 comments): "I don't think the Open Robotics supplied debs are suitable for most product deployments" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47338839)) "Most of the weirdness of ROS looks less weird in light of the design of the PR2" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017602))

## What people warn about

- Poor code quality and tooling (5 comments): "The average quality in ROS is rock-bottom and so while it contains all of the things you might want from a robotics framework, you pay dearly for it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47350247)) "The conceptual design (nodes) is great, its just the execution that is awful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47336764)) "the general dev experience and tooling around ROS can be deeply frustrating" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765090))
- Heavy overhead for small projects (3 comments): "The "STUFF" is annoying and often feels like overkill when a project is new and minimal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47339033)) "there is just so much STUFF involved in ros" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47336617)) "ROS is nearly always overkill for hobbyist robotics projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017936))
- Tied to Linux and Ubuntu versions (3 comments): "I had a very, very miserable time setting up two systems and trying to get them running a version that was supported" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018001)) "the craziest thing to me about ROS is how tied it is to Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47020623)) "how tied to specific versions of Ubuntu each ROS release is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47017676))
- Not optimized for newer workloads (2 comments): "ROS2 is not optimized for bi-manual manipulation or VLA workloads" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606736)) "it's my bet that ROS2 and all of its imitators will get lapped" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47343866))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [LeRobot by Hugging Face](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lerobot.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "ROS 2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ros/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).