OS choice

[Omniscient]

The only problem with freebsd is many hosts don't offer much support of it when you need something. I've never used ti but if you stick with cent os or fedora almost any host will help you out.

This is very true. I often have to guide linux minded hosts on the subtle differences. I would totally consider CentOS as a viable option if you need to rely on managed hosting.

The last thing you want is to be clueless and then your host to be clueless too.