OpenBSD

“pledge(2) and unveil(2), which is in firefox, makes me feel even more secure while away from my home router.”

“the thing that has allowed openbsd to adopt new things so slowly is a rock-solid set of core competencies”

“The upgrade mechanism from 7.9 to 8.0 is still gloriously simple, and exactly the same as it has been for many years”

“The default install of OpenBSD doesn't do anything, so the fact that it hasn't had a remote hole in forever isn't saying much.”

“I would not necessarily recommend this to anyone, you give up a lot, but obsd is my ultimate comfort system”

“I'm using OpenBSD as a daily desktop. The main motivation is that it's a complete system instead of several projects.”

“they have a convulated install process, dubious hardware and software compatibility that is better solved in the Linux world today”

“They've done a lot of security research and pioneered a lot of open source work around OS-level stack smashing technologies”

“I've had my share of sudden power cuts hit OpenBSD during the 20+ years I've been using it, and I have yet to ever see its file system actually go corrupt.”

“If they can provide only 20% of the functionality and only 1% of the bugs, that's a compelling trade-off for many use-cases!”

“It runs most services as their own separate users, with pledge+unveil to limit what they can access even more.”

“If your operating system only does 20% of what another operating system can do, it's easier for you to have 80% less bugs.”

“Most of their reputation comes from a time when linux distros and windows had every service enabled and exposed by default”

“pledge and unveil are nice, but exactly how effective do you expect them to be against an ssh/sftp server?”

“You just need to put the firmware needed on a usb stick, mount it and run one command, fw_update -p ./ It wasn't hard.”

“simple easy to use system that I can configure to meet third party compliance requirements without jumping through hoops”

“I use it on my ~10 year old desktop as my everyday OS. Performance may be measurably worse on benchmarks, but I never notice it doing regular stuff as a user. It's fine.”

“The documentation is fantastic, installation is easy; sysupgrade has been a big improvement, though I wish they'd slow the release cycle a little”

“isn't as strong at limiting an attacker that successfully exploited a bug they missed or weren't responsible for”

“it's particularly good for troubleshooting older hardware too since most bog standard x86 parts are well supported”

“so many things are maintained there (OpenSSH, LibreSSL, PF, Tmux, sudo kinda) that it'll always exist to a degree”

“Being able to understand the system, or at least being able to take a quick look when something doesn't work is very refreshing.”

“Configuring OpenBSD was really quite simple and rewarding. No insane linux network stack / netplan / cloud-init”

“Back then, a full GUI environment with terminal, web browser, editor: 28MiB of memory for the whole operating system and user environment!”

“I have used OpenBSD as a desktop for 7 years. Though my usage and the machine were minimal. But I thoroughly liked it.”

“according to OpenBSD we outsiders have no luck in getting a cryptographically secure operating system except for OpenBSD”

“Or, just install OpenBSD or (or FreeBSD if you're willing to sacrifice a chunk of security for nvidia, jails, and bhyve)”

“The BSD are very stable. You adjust some configuration, and then updates without having to change your tools or your config with every release.”

“I find the configuration of OpenBSD for this a lot more simple and everything that's needed, even for IPv6, is in the base install.”

“Recent OpenBSD versions have had to reduce the range of binary packages on i386 because of the difficulty of compiling them”

“I didn't want to be told that I'm using my computer wrong by someone getting paid to make Linux less usable.”

“the reduced attack surface area of OpenBSD hardware support is a kick in the pants for average users, but desirable for hardened system design”

“It started in 7.3 with the frame buffer changes and the only workaround was to disable the kernel driver.”

“The problem with their approach is they rely on it 100%, and have not enough in place to protect against bugs they miss.”

“open-bsd has so many mitigation in place that your computer will probably run 50% slower than a traditional OS”

“OpenBSD's filesystem operations are slow not because of UFS2, but because they simply haven't been optimized”

“OpenBSD is going through a slow fine grained locking transformation that FreeBSD started over 20 years ago.”

“OpenBSD has an additional leg up in that incompatible changes between releases are concisely, clearly, and consistently documented”

“It's only practical for hobbyists. I used OpenBSD as a daily driver between 2001-2005. I fought, I suffered, I conquered”

“simpler and more consistent configuration, less churn, better documentation, focus on security and secure-by-default”