Ok, I know this is a linux list and all, but I just installed FreeBSD 4.4,
and well...  It rocks.  I used the mini-iso image, which fits on one of
those little 3 inch CDRs.  

Primarily, I did it for a qmail server.  With linux, I was limited to 509
concurrent outgoing connections without patching the kernel, and no patch
exists for the 2.4 kernels (at least that I could find).  With FreeBSD, I
just add -DFD_SETSIZE=65536 to the compile options for qmail, and I'm able
to do over 32,000 concurrent outgoing connections, about 60 times more than
linux.  I don't have it set that high of course, but, the ability is there.


And installing software from the ports tree works excellent.  I tried
downloading apachetoolbox (apachetoolbox.com) and couldn't get it to compile
correctly, so I just went into the ports directory into each directory for
apache+modssl, mod_php4, and mysql, and did a make/make install in each one.
No errors, and it installed everything perfectly.  

If you haven't tried freebsd, now is a good time to give it a shot.  I
selected the express install (and then just the development package) on the
cd, and then set up networking before I rebooted.  My roommate did a regular
install and he had problems, but he was probably smoking crack.

Jay