There's no denying it: We live in a Windows world. Microsoft's operating system dominates over 90 percent of the current installed desktop market worldwide, while most of the remaining users run either the Apple Mac OS or Linux. These renegade users can be quite loyal and quite vocal. What do they know that Windows users don't?

The Mac has always enjoyed a reputation for having a great user interface, and it has become only more powerful and feature rich in recent years. Linux has existed mostly in the domain of programmers and tinkerers but has recently become easier to install and use, achieving a look and feel similar to Windows.

Linux and Mac OS developers are working steadily toward luring users away from Windows and toward their operating systems (OSs). In the following pages, we take an in-depth look at both desktop environments, paying particular attention to how they stack up against Windows XP. We also review five desktop distributions of Linux: Lindows, Lycoris, Red Hat, SuSE, and Xandros.