Windows Vista is described as 'The successor to Windows XP and is introducing a slew of new features some of the more notable are Windows Aero, Windows Sidebar and the new Windows Shell structure' and is a operating system in the os & utilities category. There are more than 100 alternatives to Windows Vista for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Self-Hosted, BSD, Windows and Mac apps. The best Windows Vista alternative is Linux Mint, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Windows Vista are Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Arch Linux.