Newbie needs advice for software raid

[Tom Munro Glass]

I'm considering buying a Dell PowerEdge 1600SC with 3 SCSI drives (no hardware 
raid) for use as a file, print, database, email/groupware and intranet 
server. I'm also considering whether to use Linux or FreeBSD - I have some 
experience with both but have never used software raid on either. I feel that 
FreeBSD would be a more stable and secure OS for a server.

From my research so far, it seems that I can use Vinum to set up software RAID 
5, but that the root partition can not be RAID 5 and that there are other 
complexities with using Vinum on the root partition.

I would welcome suggestions for how to set up the disk partitions and Vinum 
for this type of server. Also, should I be looking at FreeBSD 5.1 or would 
4.8 be a safer bet at this stage?

Thanks in advance,

Tom Munro Glass