I'll reply (or better - ask :) only partially for now, hopefully I get
to write full reply later.

> > Try sometimes some bigger disk activity (say, some untarring, deleting)
> > on Linux and BSD. Hit the power switch in the middle of operation.
> > Then compare the results on Linux and BSD after the disks are
> > fscked :)
> 
> I usually lose more data on NetBSD - but fsck doesn't even NOTICE
> all lossage.

This interests me. What you mean when you say you lose more data
on NetBSD? Can you be more concrete on what lossage is exactly not
noticed by NetBSD fsck ?

> > If you really really think async metadata is the way to go, you can
> > mount async if you prefer to. IIRC there is no option to write
> > only metadata sync on ext2fs under Linux though.
> 
> mount -o sync

That makes both metadata and data written synchronously on Linux.
That is not what I wanted :)

-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org>      http://www.ics.muni.cz/~dolecek/
@@@@  Wanna a real operating system ? Go and get NetBSD, dammit!  @@@@