Choices = Headaches

[JDShu]

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

That is one facet I agree, but I think its equally valid to say that people just hate making choices, even if they know all the information. Think about when somebody asks you what you want to eat for dinner, or schedule an appointment. Most people I know (me included), hate to make a decision and will often say something like "anything is fine" or "what times are good for you". I'm sure we can all think of more examples.

[el_koraco]

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.

Gnome Shell is a little less rigid by design at this point, that's true. What I meant was that there aren't all those right click on panel and start selecting options that people are used to in Gnome 2x. That seems to be the major gripe these days. That and people trying to enable the cube, lol.

[wolfen69]

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

Really? How much choice does the average consumer have when they go to their local electronics store and buy a computer? Professional, Ultimate, Enterprise, Server 2008 R2 Standard, Datacenter, Web Server, or HPC Server are not offered to most people. Nice try.

[toupeiro]

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

You miss the point, I can take linux, drop a low latency kernel in, BigSMP, or perhaps build it against SPARC. Why? Because I've been enabled to. I can make it a media server. I can throw in IB cards and make it a part of an HPC cluster. I can do this with the same vanilla ubuntu install.

Windows only enables you within the framework and architecture Microsoft is providing and building for. To break this down, ALL those choices across the different "flavors" of windows, Linux gives you with absolutely no barriers.

If you consider that line up by microsoft choices, you haven't, or simply don't have the need to enable yourself with what linux really has to offer. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but it sort of makes it impossible for you to make a truly substantial comparison.

In my opinion, this thread is for people who have never turned to linux to enable them to do something they thought they never could do. Those of us who have been enabled know that the prospect of losing choice is one of the most destructive things you could do to linux and the culture which spawned it into what it is today.