Okay, so I've been a BSD bigot for years.  No surprise there.  I figure,
"Gee, maybe I should try something else, just to see how it is.  I have
some pretty fast hardware at work (Ultra1, PIII/450)."

WARNING:  CONTAINS REFERENCES TO LINUX BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE GRAND
CONCLUSION :-)

I picked Slackware 7 Linux as an alternate install on the P3, since I
have some ethical issues with RedHate^H.  I have yet to try Debian, but
that's another (*(*can_of_worms)[N])();...

Slack 7 is okay as far as installs go; it won't let you go install a
LILO until you go through all the configuration steps of filesystems,
network cards, etc.

And then the sucker doesn't want to run X for me.  Maybe it's something
I'm fatfingering somewhere, but I figure I oughtta recompile the kernel.

...I'm still waiting.  My NetBSD kernel compiled faster than this.

And oh, yeah, regarding LILO.  Slack won't boot without it, at least
not that I can tell.  And what's this thing about requiring DOS
partitions to use as filesystem partitions?

Summary:
    Partitioning
	Linux partitioning requirements are completely brain-dead.  At
	least BSD can use its standard scheme, even if that only
	effectively leaves me four other partitions (some of which I
	might have to use to reference existing DOS partitions).
	[What's the chance of us migrating, at least temporarily, to
	 a 16-partition scheme, or did I just call open_CoW() again?]

    Booting
	Thanks to the information provided me on IRC, I was able to
	set up my machine to boot BSD from my (work-required) NT boot
	menu.  I can't do this with Linux -- I have to use a boot floopy.

    Building
	I like the menu-based configurator of Slack -- that's actually
	kinda cool (and I'm considering constructing such a beast for
	NetBSD).  But the build was significantly slower for Linux than
	for NetBSD.  Same compiler...

Bottom line:  BSD just screams on my hardware, and all I had to do was
make sure my bootloader worked!

				--*greywolf;
--
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards
 -- it makes them soggy and hard to light."	-- unknown