Well, Ferret is not a "common service" anymore. Most of people already switched to Sphinx. I had horrible experience with Ferret myself, and I wouldn't say it's reliable. It's not even developed anymore. The thing that you mention Ferret in this context just confirms that you don't have much experience with Rails. It's not a standard Rails feature, it's a 3rd party addon. You don't judge framework by quality of addons, just like you don't judge operating system by quality of programs written to it.

No way, seriously this sentence made me laugh aloud. You can hardly find more closed-minded nation in the world when it comes to choosing OS. It's either Mac OS or Vista, ordinary people don't bother to see more options. I'm a Mac or a PC, no third way. A year ago it was impossible to buy laptop with Linux pre-installed in whole area of Tottenham Court Road - now you can find plenty of UMPCs with Linux there, but it doesn't mean Brits care - it just means UMPCs are selling good there, and they happened to come with Linux by vendors choice.