I'm in love with FreeBSD. I have an old Pentium II 300Mhz currently serving up a website -Apache with mod_php, MySQL database, an FTP server, SSH for remote shell access. The box even monitors my network producing MRTG bandwidth graphs without breaking a sweat.
Yes, this computer is too cheap to run that Microsoft blot-ware, and yes you are right - the problem is bad software - windows software. I challenge you to run microsoft equivilant on that kind of hardware - you can't even come close to security, stability, maintainability and cost.
as for low-quality. Well...FreeBSD is the only free operating system listed in Netcraft's longest uptime list for web servers [x]. Quality speaks for itself there.