[kemotep]

I would agree that it can be difficult to find quality hardware that supports the open source software stack.

For example, what wireless access points are compatible with an openbsd router/firewall? I’ll admit that my initial searches were short but only finding results about wireless chipsets to use in the router were frustrating (I guess if I wanted to build my own access points that information would be valuable).

[detaro]

What does it even mean for an access point to be "compatible" with a specific OS on the router?

[kemotep]

Like the ability for the ap to understand how the vlans the router setup work. I’m still quite the network novice but it seems like if I wanted a bsd firewall -> managed switch -> wireless ap I would need to confirm some level of interoperability for decent performance?

[detaro]

That kind of interoperability has nothing to do with the OSes though if you straight-up configure things. VLANs are VLANs, regardless if it's Linux, Windows, BSD, Cisco, ... on the other end of the cable. (And if you expect some kind of automatic configuration sync etc the answer is in reverse "doesn't work unless you buy everything from one vendor", for that part there is little standardization)

[kemotep]

That is good to know. Far too many guides I have read for home networks are for single vendor network stacks and despite that never being the case at any of my jobs.