honestly, i don't think there's too much of a leader in a speed war. i don't know as much about linux, but the configurability, customization and optimization that can be done with FreeBSD is pretty crazy. i think either system, finely tuned, could do the job equally well. i think it comes down to personal preference. i've never seen a FreeBSD box being "slow". a friend of mine used to run a web server off a crapped out p133 laptop, and that server could handle so many static webpages it was insane. the traffic numbers it could handle are downright crazy. in a lot of cases of web page serving, the bottleneck comes with apache. there are better alternatives out there if you're willing to put in the time and specialize your setup.
