With the Save XP campaign continuing to capture momentum, and signatures, and myriad XP users facing, in the words of one such reader, a choice between “an operating system that would soon be obsolete (XP) or one that was buggy and would break much existing hardware (Vista),” both Linux and Mac desktops could be appealing right about now. But, how realistic is a switch to Linux or Mac OS X? “For some users — often technically savvy people such as engineers, consultants, designers and CTOs — it is clearly an option that already works quite well,” Galen Gruman explains. For consumers, making such a transition is one thing, but in a business environment, it won’t be quite as easy. For those who chose to do so, though, picking the right platform is another matter still.Gruman goes over the pros and cons of each in Time to dump Windows? “A one-size-fits-all approach may be unrealistic. And that likely explains why many businesses will have a mix, dominated by Windows XP today (and perhaps Vista in a few years) but not exclusively tied to Microsoft’s OS.” Software Development