FreeBSD beginner (NetBSD advanced)

[Wojciech Puchar]

i want to go to FreeBSD instead of NetBSD on my i386 machines because of 
all "new features" :( introduced in NetBSD after 1.5 mostly crashing
softdeps, strange memory/unified disk cache management (large writing to 
file almost freezes everything) etc. etc.

i installed FreeBSD once to do quick performance tests, and at least in 
disk I/O and fair scheduling it's MUCH better (tested 4.10 and 5.1).

my questions:

1) what is Buf and Cache in top exactly? why buf on 96MB machine gets to 
near 20MB and never goes down? it's almost 1/4 of memory size.

2) can i compile kernel with -march=pentium,pentium[234] -O2 optimization?
in NetBSD 2.0 doing -march=pentium produces kernel that doesn't boot at 
all, just resets.

3) how can i disable compiling, using etc.. all that LKM (KLD) stuff?

i really prefer one static kernel.

4) is IPv6 working well? (i mean no crashes etc...) i will get real IPv6 
zone allocation soon and want to use it.

5) what is used in FreeBSD for traffic management. NetBSD has altq - 
please just give me a name i will RTFM.

6) how to turn using serial port as console on i386? my home machine is 
headless, i'm using X terminals to access it.

7) does FreeBSD support 2 CPUs on i386?


sorry if too much questions at once, i would like to move my home machine 
to FreeBSD tomorrow, test it at real for a month and then (if it will be 
better than NetBSD for my needs) replace other machines.

should i go to 4.10 or better 5.2.1? stability is really important to me.