As I was browsing distrowatch today, I found a link to an interesting discussion on the benefits of Linux in general and of Debian in particular. I'm unable to verify everthing he says (I have no real experience with BSD), but the article is very helpful nonetheless for understanding the many strengths of Debian. You can find the article at the following link:

http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/t...bian/talk.html