> I installed Slackware 10. Kernel 2.4.26. Same hardware. Even without X running
> there was only 3 megs of free memory. Fvwm plus mozilla and xmms was jerky at
> times while playing streaming audio. I used reiserfs for all of the file

at time i knew only linux :( i used stable (!!!) versions of reiserfs for 
some time and always ended with restoring everything from backup after 
even minor problems like power failure or crash. with ext2 things were 
much better, but i never ever had filesystem corrupted in NetBSD.

> with this box, whereas I would have felt very frustrated with slackware 10.
>
> At some point I will install NetBSD 2.x.
>
FreeBSD and NetBSD are really comparable in performance - in same cases 
better in some worse but with "naked eye" look both are good.

i prefer NetBSD because it's clear, while FreeBSD (4.* and 5.* what i 
tried) is made "user friendly" (=overcomplicated and messy). with NetBSD 
it's really clear how to configure kernel, services etc.

and i use older version of NetBSD (1.5.4) for i386 devices acting as 
routers/NAT/DNS boxes as it works smooth and fast with low end 486 with 
8MB RAM (12-16 is true requirement for 2.0).

i have plenty of such machines (like 486/33 8MB RAM) for free, they don't 
take much power i have got lots of very old drives like 40-80MB for a few 
beers :) - 40MB is more than enough for well-cut NetBSD 1.5

it's much better than floppy-based linux distros, at least i have good 
logging there.