Choices = Headaches

[grahammechanical]

For some people choice = breaking the OS. And then, who is to blame? Not them, but Ubuntu.

Six months ago there were two ways to make changes to the OS. The command line and the menu system. Even then you could access some dialog boxes from an icon as well as a menu list.

Now, we have three ways of working. We now have the Dash and the Launcher. I foresee that at some point this excess of choice in the ways of making changes will be altered.

Some people will be very happy with a device that has the OS pre-installed even though they can only change the look of the user interface and not much else. The only updates will be vital security fixes. They will be very happy with their purchase because they cannot break it unless they drop it and it gets run over by a bus. This kind of device will be like the mobile phone and may be just as successful.

And I might buy one of those gadgets.

Regards.

[beniwtv]

Now by the same rule, I'm not going to eat anymore.

There is just too many different foods to chose from... And by the way, which of the ten types of milk should I get? Which car? Which soap? OMG!

But seriously, why would choice be a bad thing? We choose every day, yet when it comes to computers choice is suddenly bad.

As I see it, choice is only bad if you do not know what your choices are. If you need to make a choice, you will need to learn what your choices are, and what would be the best choice for *you*. Else, just don't use it so you don't have to make the choice.

IMHO.

[el_koraco]

The whole choice debate going on in the last couple of months is pretty nonsensical. Right now there are two new UI's, the makers of which have decided to take away some configuration options for the sake of added stability. In a few iterations, the configurability will come back. QED.

[Copper Bezel]

That's not entirely accurate. Much of the limitation of customization in Unity is by design.

[el_koraco]

For now. It barely functions as it is. Selecting any additional Compiz features is playing with fire. I can only imagine how long it would take X to crash if there was an option to move the launcher to the bottom at this point

[kabloink]

I have a solution to all of these problems regarding too much choice.



Enjoy your totalitarianism.

/thread

You still have to choose which version to buy.

Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise.

You might also need Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web Server, or HPC Server.

Choices, choices

[Sean Moran]

Choices are great if one choice is meat and one choice is vegetables. Choices between lamb and beef require more time for contemplation. Choices between brussels sprouts and cauliflour require more time to wait for alternate choices.

Making a choice is easy when we can see clearly which choice to make. Too many good choices at once are time consuming but less of a problem than being given a range of bad choices, when the outcome is the same whatever choice one makes.

A distro with the most recent stable kernel and a good range of apps running on GNOME would make the choices far more simple, but will it be Fedora or Mijnt or OpenSUSE or some custom invocation of Karmic?

It's also easier to make a choice when you know a little about the end results of each possible decision. (times like these I wish I had been more dedicate4d to experimentation with diffe4rent distros)

[Copper Bezel]

For now. It barely functions as it is. Selecting any additional Compiz features is playing with fire. I can only imagine how long it would take X to crash if there was an option to move the launcher to the bottom at this point

Christ, I know. My answer to every other post in Desktop Environments is

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1
unity --reset

Edit: Oh, incidentally, I don't see Gnome Shell as hostile to customization at all. The theming and window management extension base being written in CSS points to an attempt to open up interface customization to non-developers. Point of fact, I imagine they sacrificed some performance and functionality in doing so to make that happen, and I think we'll begin to see, very shortly, some wildly unique interfaces for Gnome Shell popping up on Gnome Look.

[aysiu]

It's not the existence of choice that's paralyzing--it's the lack of information about choices:
Making sense of an abundance of choice

[ikt]

You still have to choose which version to buy.

Choices, choices

Interestingly it seems the poster you quoted didn't visit the page I linked because it was suggesting Windows Vista had to much choice, not to little, which would go against the grain of what that poster suggested.

Oh well