Why use OpenBSD?

Documentation & System Coherence

• Some see OpenBSD’s centralized man pages and FAQ as a major strength: consistent, complete, and tightly aligned with the system.
• Others found gaps for common tasks (e.g., defining daemons, reverse-proxy setups with nginx) and felt the docs didn’t clearly explain the “right” way to create and supervise custom services.
• Compared to Linux, BSD advocates emphasize that a single team designs kernel + userland as one coherent OS, vs. “cobbled-together” components.

Reliability, Upgrades & Ecosystem

• Several report OpenBSD servers “just keep working,” with upgrades (syspatch/sysupgrade) being predictable and low-drama.
• By contrast, Ubuntu is frequently criticized for fragile upgrades and regressions; Debian is praised as far more stable and easier to upgrade, with unattended-upgrades for security fixes.
• On OpenBSD, there’s no full “unattended upgrades” story: base can be patched with syspatch, but packages and frequent six‑month OS upgrades still need planning.

Security Model & Features

• Security-by-default (minimal services enabled) is viewed as ideal for servers and firewalls, though some argue “disable everything” can be impractical for appliances and that good defaults matter more.
• Pledge/unveil are highlighted as powerful, practical process sandboxing tools; Linux’s seccomp is described as complex and fragile at scale, though it’s widely used in browsers and Android. Landlock is noted as a newer, closer analogue.
• pf firewall syntax is widely praised as much clearer than iptables; some counter that modern Linux nftables narrows this gap.

Performance, Hardware & Use Cases

• A recurring criticism: OpenBSD is noticeably slower (web serving, firewall throughput), partly due to conservative design (e.g., hyperthreading disabled by default for side-channel concerns), though recent releases reportedly improved the TCP stack.
• Linux is seen as superior for raw performance, hardware support, desktop usability, and containers; many would pick Debian or Alpine for general servers.
• OpenBSD is favored for routers/firewalls, specialized servers, and as a “understandable”, buildable-from-source system; less so as a mainstream desktop or BigCorp platform.

Licensing & Philosophy

• BSD license appeals to those wanting fewer copyleft obligations, though some argue this mainly matters to large vendors.
• Some perceive BSD communities as niche or even “dying breed”; others value them precisely for being smaller, simpler, and more focused.