However, since then nginx, lighttpd, and LiteSpeed have all gained various followings due to the things they do better (or don't do at all) over Apache. Apache is sort of a swiss army knife, in that it's infinitely extensible but much like a swiss army knife, it's also not always very good at everything that it does. Ever try to use the swiss army scissors to cut anything more than newsprint? I don't recommend it under the best circumstances. It will end in stitches.

lighttpd in particular has come up as popular with the Rails crowd, though that's being phased out in favor of Phusion Passenger (also known as mod_rails, though mod_rack might be more appropriate any day now).

So, this week I plan to sit down and start with this comparison on Wikipedia, and then evaluate both my own needs and the needs of my hosted sites to see if Apache is truly the best fit for my needs. Maybe I'll even go so far as to set up a shoot-out with some benchmarks. But probably not. My laziness is notorious.