This is Ángel Ortega, crime and horror fiction writer and former systems programmer (on space, avionics and cryptography environments).

My first contact with a #UNIX system was on 1989 on a Sun Sparcstation 2 running #SunOS. I discovered #Linux on 1993 with the SLS distribution. I ditched all Microsoft software on 1999 and moved all my computers to Linux and never looked back.

My first encounter with #OpenBSD (inside a VM) was circa 2015. I was debugging a ground station software that was complicated as hell and had some memory leaks and was driving me mad; a friend of mine recommended compiling my beast on OpenBSD because the memory management is very different and it immediately crashed on a place I never expected. That filled my heart with bliss.

My first experience with OpenBSD in real hardware was on a laptop in 2020. Everything worked (except Bluetooth because, you know, there is no Bluetooth support on OpenBSD). I finally had to install Linux on that laptop because of reasons and my heart was a bit broken.

I now have OpenBSD on a tiny Toshiba NB 200. It's 32 bit, so no Firefox for poor old Ángel, but I don't really care because I used it mostly for fiction writing and remote server maintenance while on coffee shops, libraries or parks. Battery usage is great. Everything works like a charm.

I love OpenBSD because it's compact. It makes me feel like on a vintage UNIX system, simple and solid. Native tools and servers share lookalike configuration files. Man pages are awesome af. It includes a C compiler in its base system and that means "I am a real Operating System" to me. I love security is one of its main goals. OpenBSD hackers are brilliant, stubborn, unique people.

I don't love the filesystem.

I don't care that it's a bit slower than other OSes.

If you haven't tried OpenBSD, do it this October.

CC: @solene@bsd.network