Which OS to prefer for dedicated MySQL server?

[ManicMarble]

We are about to migrate our company's ERP database to MySQL 5.0 and we're planning to set up a dedicated database server for this.

Binary loging will have to be enabled and the server will have to replicate itself to a not-so-high-end slave which will propably be running under Windows Server 2003 for we don't want to invest in a second dedicated server machine for this.

I made a test with our development setup with the master running on an dual processor Windows Server 2003 and the slave being the above mentioned server. Performance was very poor - a lot slower than with our MySQL-4.1 server on our Linux webserver machine with comparable hardware. Even without replication and binary loging enabled on the Windows server.

Now I'm curious: Is there a significant difference in performance with MySQL running on Windows or Linux?

Does a slave on a slow machine slow down performance of a master on a fast machine?

Can anybody recommend any (web) literature about different MySQL server setups for different purposes?

Our new ERP database must be up and running by January 1st, so we better get going with the production server. So fast help is very much appreciated...

Cheers,
Martin