Strictly my opinion : I learned about FreeBSD about 6 years ago and did quite a lot on it for about two years, so I share my opinion with you. I wanted to program on FreeBSD but unfortunately my programming knowledge was limited to basic programming of the lates 80s', some html and some asp towards the mid 90s so there was a lot I needed to catch up on, hence C# for now. Anyway, onto the thread... One thing about FreeBSD is that it is a complete Operating System and the most critical part of any Operating System is the updates incases of bugs or new developments. This I found to be the most important part of any software usage. And FreeBSD is built with the TCP/IP stack in mind. One major benefit I got out of venturing for 2 years into FreeBSD is that I could similar commands on a MAC OS when required. What level did I use FreeBSD at? The major part for me at that time was to work with creating transparent caching and proxing, network vlans, segmentations etc. I'd hoped to get multiple Ethernet cards so as to build a super router , each ethernet port doing its own things etc and physically looking like a dslam. I even installed Webmin and customised its template so that it really worked well displaying network, cpu stats etc. The kernel customization, features is really easy to work on and you do not need to be a coder to know more. I can write endless benefits for Layer 3 people about the potential of FreeBSD, but you should take a look for yourself. Hopefully, it may interest you more : - The FreeBSD handbook, mostly you need to know more about this great system http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/book.html - And here is the Mascot, and the site : http://www.freebsd.org/ - FreeBSD9 64bit installation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYOHPJ3yzWo Rgds. :-)