[peatmoss]

Simplicity. I have a long love for FreeBSD, but the project has different aims than OpenBSD.

Linux and FreeBSD are novels. OpenBSD strives to be a short poem.

Linux and FreeBSD push really hard to add cutting-edge features, but OpenBSD pushes hard to see what can be removed and still retain essential functionality. OpenBSD packs a remarkable amount of functionality into a code footprint that doesn’t feel like it has grown appreciably since I first ran it in the late 90s.

At the same time, this flensing process has allowed OpenBSD to move quickly on some innovations like “doas” instead of sudo. They also maintain cononical implementations of their other products like OpenSSH and were able to move quickly to their cleaned-up OpenSSL implementation LibreSSL.

As for laptop support, I wouldn’t say their hardware support compares to Linux. That is, they don’t support everything. Rather, for supported laptop (and desktop!) hardware, that suppport is excellent. Put another way: that which is supported is supported very well.