Out of curiousity, I threw together a quick comparison using SlickSpeed and the latest jQuery/Prototype frameworks.

http://bit.ly/1Ei4o8

If someone wants to contribute a jQuery version compiled with advanced opts, I'll be happy to add it to the list.

This is too hard. Why don't you have some boxes that you can drag and drop to?

It's going to have to depend on your app. I say try both and benchmark.

For an app I was testing it out on, it seemed to be about the same.

FWIW, Facebook uses APC.

nginx is what I choose to use these days.

Couple of comments:

* Make sure that your init script is actually working. The init script you posted a link to places the pid file in a different location than the default for a source compiled nginx.

* There's an Ubuntu package for php+fpm somewhere on Launchpad. https://launchpad.net/~tarkus/+archive/ppa

* gzip support on older IE versions is iffy. See http://bit.ly/A0CRd for a config that ignores those browsers.

Also check that the county or city that you live in does not have a separate business license fee.

I live in San Mateo which does have that requirement, so YMMV.

If you are not concerned about unlimited liability, you can consider a sole proprietorship else LLC is probably the way to go.

As always, I'm not a lawyer and merely speaking from my experience.