Dated experience here. I used OpenBSD a long time ago (20 years ago) as a primary desktop as well as within data center (physical not virtualized). I absolutely loved it, however expect you will spend more time configuring for your liking.
There were occasional situations where esoteric hardware support was iffy (especially software driven win modems). I anecdotally believe there’s a better experience today but would probably pay attention to GPU and wifi hardware.
Install is a breeze, probably one of the better install experiences out there. The port system was very easy to use to install 3rd party apps. Also pretty easy to build most things from source or modify for its particular differences.
The community around source contribution takes a little adjustment since there is a real focus on the OS design goals and less so on specific edge cases. Contributing to ports is a little more accessible.
I’ve used FreeBSD around the same time with similar experience. A little larger of a community there though I found OpenBSD’s contributors to be highly engaged and accessible.
There were occasional situations where esoteric hardware support was iffy (especially software driven win modems). I anecdotally believe there’s a better experience today but would probably pay attention to GPU and wifi hardware.
Install is a breeze, probably one of the better install experiences out there. The port system was very easy to use to install 3rd party apps. Also pretty easy to build most things from source or modify for its particular differences.
The community around source contribution takes a little adjustment since there is a real focus on the OS design goals and less so on specific edge cases. Contributing to ports is a little more accessible.
I’ve used FreeBSD around the same time with similar experience. A little larger of a community there though I found OpenBSD’s contributors to be highly engaged and accessible.