ROS 2
Robotics framework in Developer tools
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.
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.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 25
- approval share
- 31%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not 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: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Common standard for robotics community
“it's still the only stake in the ground around which we've manage to corral a community”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” “Yes it is terrible, but the alternatives are even worse”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” “They could Just have used ROS...”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol” - Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: RoboAPI – A unified REST API for robots, like Stripe but for hardware”
Free with useful ecosystem conventions
“it's free and available and absolutely gives you a good idea of the kinds of workflows you will see”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Feeling irrelevant in back end. How to pivot to automotive software?” “I don't think the Open Robotics supplied debs are suitable for most product deployments”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)” Good tutorials and learning workflows
“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”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” “it's free and available and absolutely gives you a good idea of the kinds of workflows you will see”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Feeling irrelevant in back end. How to pivot to automotive software?” “Go through the ROS tutorials, using a simulated robot at first”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” Design rationale explains odd parts
“I don't think the Open Robotics supplied debs are suitable for most product deployments”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)” “Most of the weirdness of ROS looks less weird in light of the design of the PR2”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Poor code quality and tooling
“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.”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)” “The conceptual design (nodes) is great, its just the execution that is awful.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)” “the general dev experience and tooling around ROS can be deeply frustrating”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: I quit my job over weaponized robots to start my own venture” - Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)”
- Comment from 4 Nov 2025 on Hacker News
Heavy overhead for small projects
“The "STUFF" is annoying and often feels like overkill when a project is new and minimal.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)” “there is just so much STUFF involved in ros”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)” “ROS is nearly always overkill for hobbyist robotics projects”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” Tied to Linux and Ubuntu versions
“I had a very, very miserable time setting up two systems and trying to get them running a version that was supported”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” “the craziest thing to me about ROS is how tied it is to Linux”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” “how tied to specific versions of Ubuntu each ROS release is”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How to get started with robotics as a hobbyist?” Not optimized for newer workloads
“ROS2 is not optimized for bi-manual manipulation or VLA workloads”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “Building a robotics research setup that lives next to my desk” “it's my bet that ROS2 and all of its imitators will get lapped”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “PeppyOS: A simpler alternative to ROS 2 (now with containers support)”
What people recommend instead
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ROS 2This page | 11 | 25 | 31% | 6 | — | — |
| LeRobot by Hugging Face | 5 | 2 | 71% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 47 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it probably doesn't work at all at least 40% of the time”
“They could Just have used ROS...”
“you might have saved me a lot of time and anger”
“but the unnecessary complexity added is abysmal”
“ROS2 is not optimized for bi-manual manipulation or VLA workloads”
“That was my take 8 years ago glad to hear it's still that”
“dumbshit naming conventions, like ubuntu and ROS”
“adoption outside research/academia is still fragmented”
“there is, it's called ROS”
“a dependancy on it is a big pain in the neck from my point of view”
“the general dev experience and tooling around ROS can be deeply frustrating”
“I find it to generally be a terrible experience”
“I always thought that the quality of that code is mediocre at best.”
“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.”
“we will rewrite the annoying parts, that's for sure”
“it's my bet that ROS2 and all of its imitators will get lapped”
“The "STUFF" is annoying and often feels like overkill when a project is new and minimal.”
“ROS gives you some important things "for free" if you cooperate with its ecosystem conventions.”
“I don't think the Open Robotics supplied debs are suitable for most product deployments”
“The conceptual design (nodes) is great, its just the execution that is awful.”
“there is just so much STUFF involved in ros”
“ros is powerful but has legit problems”
“dependency hell and the convoluted build system”
“it's still the only stake in the ground around which we've manage to corral a community”
“the craziest thing to me about ROS is how tied it is to Linux”
“I had a very, very miserable time setting up two systems and trying to get them running a version that was supported”
“ROS is nearly always overkill for hobbyist robotics projects”
“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”
“Yes it is terrible, but the alternatives are even worse”
“the #1 thing you tell them is "start with learning ROS"”
“how tied to specific versions of Ubuntu each ROS release is”
“Most of the weirdness of ROS looks less weird in light of the design of the PR2”
“it's not worth the effort for hobby-level stuff”
“Go through the ROS tutorials, using a simulated robot at first”
“it's free and available and absolutely gives you a good idea of the kinds of workflows you will see”
“The ROS 1 world was full of this kind of thing for getting values between Python and CMake and it's truly gross”
“You probably haven't had the displeasure to work with C++ in combination with ROS.”
“from my experience so far they're kind of slow”
“The packaging is only one of ROS's numerous issues.”
“add more layers of crap on it until it sorta kinda works sometimes”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.