I'd like to have a friendly and informative comparative discussion on BSD and Linux if anyone is willing to join.
The purpose is to increase knowledge and general chit chat.

I use Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD 7.x, and Windows on several different pieces of hardware.

IMO, Linux installers are more user friendly than those of *BSD. That is not to say sysinstall is hard to use. Support for new hardware can be touch and go with Linux/*BSD. BSDs can use Linux binaries, where the reverse is not true.

By design, the BSD releases are more stable being that the kernel and userland are as a single unit. Linux has the advantage being more user friendly and configurable.
I've used Fedora, Suse, Debian, Redhat, Vector Linux and Knoppix as Desktops.
Sysinstall does take some getting used to.
Years back, there was a program to use BSD binaries on redhat. It went though.

I started out with freebsd2.x, and I've installed up to 6.x
The last few years I have been installing debian almost exclusively, but I still remember running mergemaster and make && make install && make clean, and a host of other freebsd-isms.
I still look in the wrong directory from time to time for certain things.

i run Debian also on this machine.
You should try using FreeBSD again. It's improved.

I build servers for small office environments, so I tend to stick with the (now)familiar debian for simplicity <read that as laziness>.
I might give it a go again after studying software raid and journaling filesystems on freebsd.

Debian deserves a little credit: It can run stable on more than one kernel.
You can run a desktop with it using just 64M.
And it will run on almost anything.