The fallacy of choice

I'm sure by now I don't really have to describe in detail this phenomenon: Whenever you criticize a luser about his choice of OS, he'll inevitably come back with, "at least it gives me choices." Choice in window manager, choice in terminal application, choice in file manager, choice in desktop environment, choice in kernel version, you name it.

This "choice", as loudly as it is trumpeted, is a key reason that Linux has not made it on the desktop. Let me attempt to show you why.

Every argument for "choice" is usually accompanied by a statement along the lines of, "there are many different kinds of users that prefer different choices, therefore we need to support all of them." In terms of distribution of choices, given 10 choices, this statement implies the following type of distribution.

In other words, ten equal choices with ten roughly equal-sized groups each preferring a different choice. For some limited version of the world, this may be true (for example, existing people who are FOSS users already, fighting amongst themselves). But if you look at the general population at large, I claim a different picture emerges:

Here, the blue represents the people who don't care about a particular choice, and actively do not want to have to make a choice. They just want things to work. They will take "working" over "choice" in an instant. They essentially want the developers to make choices for them.*

Linux and FOSS so far have optimized for the former picture of the world, not the latter. In doing so, they've concentrated on inserting abstraction layers and decoupled mechanisms at every layer of the stack: kernel, graphical toolkit, command line shell, terminal program, text editor, office suite, window manager, desktop environment, sound system, etc. etc.

In adding choice after choice, Linux moves farther and farther from what the mainstream user wants.

Furthermore, any developer will tell you that each time a new layer of "choice" is added, the possible number of configurations multiplies. This means more untested configurations, more bugs, and more brokenness. Not necessarily due to incompetence of developers, but rather simply due to the sheer number of configurations that are possible.

So not only does the addition of so many choices alienate would be users, it also makes it difficult for developers to create tested, working configurations. It's a double whammy. Obsession with providing choice it every level actively works against efforts that would otherwise push Linux to provide what the mainstream wants.

Look at OSX. The amount of choice you have in OSX is minuscule compare to what you get with Linux. Yet, do you see the majority of mac users complaining? Look at the internet, look at how IE still has a huge market share. People like to think that it's because people don't know any better and that they need to be educated. My experience says otherwise. People don't care. They want what works for them. For the vast majority of cases IE works for people. It may not be optimal, but people just don't care.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Even current lusers don't want choice between two or more options that are broken. They want a working baseline, and then they want to be able to make all the choices they personally care about. Unfortunately, there are very few projects that are concentrated on developing this working baseline. Instead they usually try to build one small piece of the puzzle, then make it interface with as many other parts in numerous and useless ways.

Let's look at the server side. Why does Linux succeed here? One of the big reasons is that there is a working baseline. Everyone knows what it's called: LAMP. If in doubt, start with LAMP. Yes, there are still other options. Different webservers, different databases, different programming languages, even different OS'es (WIMP anyone?). The point is that if you don't want to make any of these choices, and instead you want a proven base starting point, you have one.

Unfortunately on the desktop side, no such "non-choice" choice exists. In addition, there are many more pieces that need to work together to provide a friendly experience. What is the LAMP of the desktop? Whatever it is, it's going to have a lot more letters. I claim it still doesn't exist. Everyone disagrees what the desktop should be. Everyone wants choice. Everyone except the mainstream users that the desktop is supposed to be built for.


* In some sense, distros try to do this. But this fails for a few reasons. 1) There are too many distros. 2) Distros aren't the ones with the expertise to make the right choices.