Is Passenger really the default for most people? I tried it once and honestly prefer just dropping thin or unicorn behind nginx. And with this discussion, I'll probably be trying out puma in the near future.
And you definitely should try Unicorn and Puma. We never said that Unicorn and Puma are bad technologies. In fact, we think they're good technologies. That said, we also think that there are many reasons why one would prefer Phusion Passenger (either open source or Enterprise) over Unicorn or Puma.
One thing that some people don't know about Phusion Passenger is that it is versatile. Phusion Passenger Standalone is a mode, specifically designed to be dropped behind Nginx, just like Thin/Unicorn/Puma. That is a good alternative if you don't like the Apache/Nginx integrated modes.
