I've been a 2.4 user for a long time and trying to dive into SS3, starting with the tutorials and I can't even get past the site search. My tutorial is bombing trying to do a search with the following error:

[User Error] Couldn't run query: SELECT DISTINCT count(*) FROM "SiteTree_Live" WHERE ( MATCH (Title, MenuTitle, Content, MetaTitle, MetaDescription, MetaKeywords) AGAINST ('documentation*' IN BOOLEAN MODE) + MATCH (Title, MenuTitle, Content, MetaTitle, MetaDescription, MetaKeywords) AGAINST ('documentation*' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND ShowInSearch 0) The used table type doesn't support FULLTEXT indexes
GET /SSV3/home/SearchForm?Search=documentation&action_results=L
Line 568 in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/SSV3/framework/model/MySQLDatabase.php

I have no idea what that means, but it certainly doesn't look good. I'm testing it under MAMP which is using PHP 5.4.4 and mySQL 5.5.25, any ideas?

This is like hell, I eventually want to be able to upgrade my existing 2.4 site to SS3 but I am using a ton of modules plus stuff I built from tutorials. In my case about NO ONE has updated their module and me trying to do it is bound to be very much like trying to get a stupid search to work. So on a side note, what's the drawback of sticking with 2.4? :0) Will it really just disappear like the Dodo bird? Why do a lot of devs still say they are using it for production and is that a wise idea?

With 3.0 on MySQL, you need to run dev/build after enabling site search.

That did it! THANKS!

The tutorial only says:
"After including that in your _config.php you will need to rebuild the database by visiting http://localhost/your_site_name/home?flush=all"

that does nothing, I think that must be a mistake. I needed to do the dev/build just like you said.

I had problems with site search logic, abandon it completely and implemented the Google search.

"So on a side note, what's the drawback of sticking with 2.4?"

There are a lot of drawbacks. For example, admin interface and completely unuseful treeview on sites with many articles is just one of them.

Looking at the code, well, the framework still could be used for maintenance purpose, but it definitely should not be used for developing new modules and functionalities.

"Why do a lot of devs still say they are using it for production and is that a wise idea?"

For now, it's the only option for me. Modules are not updated for v3 and the worst thing is datamodel documentation is awful, i.e. it doesn't exist at all. As an example of good writing samples working with database look at this Yii article

I wrote many SilverStripe tutorials on my blog in order to help others to solve problems that I had and I know it's time consuming and not easy to write docs; but still it's not an excuse.

And maybe the main reason, I had updated my own site to new version (somehow), but restored old version after that because performances were terrible; in my case v3 is more than 10x slower performing the same logic in comparison to v2!