which version to pick up

[Valentine Kouznetsov]

Hi,
I would say that I know nothing about FreeBSD and something about UNIX 
and even more about Linux.
I was grown up with Linux. And I don't want any response like: "ah, 
you're Linux guy, we'll not talk to you since
BSD is BETTER then Linux". I don't want this discussion. I want to try 
FreeBSD and here my questions:
1) how good/bad support for laptops (in particular pci, pcmcia, usb, acpi)
2) where to check that my hardware is supported
3) which version of FreeBSD to choose for desktop/server/laptop
4) is there any journaling filesystem available on FreeBSD (and I want 
it be default while installing FreeBSD)
5) how different gcc/ld on BSD from Linux (mostly loader)
6) what the difference between Free/Open/Net and why (give me the real 
reasons) should I choose FreeBSD
rather then Open/Net clones.
And don't get me wrong, I'm reading FAQs and Handbook, I just wanna hear 
real voice with real
opinion.

I'll appreciate if you cc me as well since I'm not in a list, hmm yet :)
With all respect to FreeBSD,
Valentine.