The public has not been given a real choice. What's been left out of the equation is the performance factor. The differences between DR-DOS and DOS were feature differences, not performance differences. Microsoft has always been vulnerable to performance comparisons, since in that area its products generally have been on the short end of the stick. But users want performance and ease of use.
Features come in a distant third, since most software today is feature-rich.
Features are simply not that important. We do not need any more of them. We need speed. We need an alternative that works better than what we have. And now that Windows 96 has become Windows 97 and will soon be Windows 98, from what I hear, we need something new sooner rather than later.